The first incident was that a member who was not very well liked, was accused by the guildmaster of trying to convince someone to join him in his travels after he had heard the guildmaster in guildchat ask that person to join a GUILD GROUP SOMEWHERE ELSE BECAUSE THEY WERE NEEDED THERE. No one could convince the guildmaster otherwise.. that it was not intentional. He wanted the person thrown out of the guild, but he wouldn't do it hisself and had the guild council and officers met him where this person was and vote on throwing him out.. the vote was to throw him out, but the guildmaster would not tell him hisself.. instead he made an officer do it. That officer did not like having to do it but did as he was told and was upset by the whole affair. The very next day, the guildmaster, who I was supposed to be marring in game soon, also let me know that cyber sex was required to be his wife. Being so upset I got my private messages and guildchat mixed up.. the whole guild heard my reply to him and one by one quit the guild. By the end of the day there was no one left in that guild except the guildmaster. A few of us were hunting together in the forrest, that guildmaster came near our location to commit suicide, to be sure we all saw his death in our info panel. He had pleaded all day that he was wrong and sorry but no one wanted to hear it, so he killed the character off. [DAOC, f, 51]

I left a guild once because the guild leadership did not seem to understand that real life was more important than playing the game (my husband got sworn at because we had plans on New Year's Day -- plans we told them about in advance when they first mentioned wanting to raid that day -- because we wouldn't change those plans to attend the raid!). I left guilds twice because the guild leadership seemed to think what they wanted for themselves was more important than the rest of the guild -- one guild leader had a tendency to cyber all the female members of the guild (and some that weren't members), all while pretending to have a 'meaningful relationship' with them and trying to hide the fact he was cybering more than just that one person. Another guild recruiter (a guild I never joined) did pretty much the same thing to recruits -- you were 'guaranteed' an in (top guild on the server) if he decided he 'liked' you.

Another problem was a guild where the leadership decided their opinions were the only ones that mattered. They would do things on the spur of the moment (guildremove or take away board access) without explanation, leaving people who were 'friends' of that person to try to find out what was going on. They would 'justify' it by saying they did what they thought was necessary for the guild... The very first guild I was in, the guild leader was EQ-married to what I later found out was an emotionally unstable woman. She would have these fits where she would decide somebody in the guild was 'against her', and would make the guildleader get rid of them. I saw it happen to a couple of other people, so I was talking to some of the other guildies about it, trying to decide whether it would be a good idea to move on, guild-wise. She found out about it, so I became her next target. I removed myself, a lot of the guild followed because one of the original members got pissed about what happened and she took him (level 20 or so at the time?) to the Dreadlands (a level 40+zone) and left him there. Two of our friends stayed, one was an officer and one of the founders of the guild. They broke a rule the guild leader and his girlfriend made up and grouped with me anyway, and the guildleader and his girlfriend and the only other remaining officer showed up, guildremoved the other founding officer and the other person. That pretty much ended the guild. That founding officer quit the game because of it. [EQ, F, 39]