Something That's Bugging Me

When you join an alliance you make a commitment to them and they make a commitment to you. The nature of that commitment will be different depending on the nature of the alliance and it's goals.

For a training alliance - their commitment to the new player is that they will train them as well as possible.  The new player commits that he/she will try their hardest to learn everything that is being taught and complete the "course".

Leaving before you have completed your training (Luke) is breaking that commitment and thus it's reasonable that the person doing the training should feel a little upset.

How far that is taken with a "poaching" alliance is up to the leader involved - but the other way is to take it as a compliment if an alliance wants your recruits so badly they will accept them before they are quite ready.

Auraya - you might already do this - but you could also clearly state as a condition of entry into your alliance that a newb will try their hardest to learn and will also try to stick the entire course.

KP

As you say "graduation", perhaps there's an official endorsement or medal at the end of it. Those who leave early don't get the certificate/medal/(inclusion in the list of honour) at the end.

ES2 wrote: Ossian wrote: Auraya wrote: This is now being resolved via IGM. Thank you for your response - especially Albatross who was most helpful.  I'd like to point out my concern is more for the newbies themselves and not my alliance. Larger alliances often don't have much time to nurture newbies which I feel is a shame and the player concerned was just over a week old, still learning and whilst I was asking him to hold off moving until he understood about the map, sov etc, his new alliance appears not to have an interest.  Still, it is irrelevant now and has been taken care of.  @Grego: Entering Q&S makes them my minions ;) Muahahahahaha! *runs off cackling*   A new player is no one's property. No one player nor alliance can claim ownership of a new player by claiming that they may ( or may not) know more about the game or that they sent them resources! I would be vastly irritated and even more so at those who continually yell "freedom for all" without taking in regards to my essentially stolen goods*.

+1

So many folks love to spout their "freedom" here, but they are no more or less free than in any social group. Freedom does not equate to a license for disrespectful behavior, which this clearly is.

Frankly, If I ran a training alliance and another alliance was doing this, I'd discourage my members from joining that alliance that is poaching simply because of their rude behaviour. You are completely looking out for your newbies' best interests by pointing out negative behavior in an alliance they may be considering because it may be indicative of the alliance culture and you want them to settle somewhere they are going to be happy...

I think it would be a good practice to extrapolate a simple contract between alliances and players.

Terms such as: Activity, participation, graduation requirements, size etc. could all be agreed upon when people join up. Problem is that joining an alliance still has a very indifferent status in Illyriad due to the fact that alliances go for quantity as much as quality. And understandably, when you have room for 100 members why would you aim for less? But as a consequence to this easy attitude towards being part of an alliance, is that you can more or less expect any behaviour in return.

Now for a training alliance picking up all kinds of players new to the game I honestly don't see how this kind of situation can be avoided in the future.

You can't reasonably prohibit an alliance from corresponding with one of your members.
You can't reasonably prohibit a member from leaving (Caus let's face it if push ever came to shove, at their state they'd simply abandon and restart).
You can't reasonably expect to know the mind or motivation of your new members, nor how seriously they will take your "code of conduct", so you are bound to meet this situation again.

However, you can publicly encourage all alliances to not recruit your pre-graduate members, but rather wait till they reach their goals.

My 2 bits.

KillerPoodle wrote: Leaving before you have completed your training (Luke)... KP