This is spot on. I tend to get really invested in thing so I have a hard time following this bit of advice, but I'll say it anyway: It's just a game. The stuff in the bank is just pixels. The gold is not real currency.

I don't mean any of that in the standard condescending, "Your situation and feelings don't matter and are invalidated," way. I mean that as a way of taking a breath and gaining some perspective. It all boils down to one thing, which the letter-writer already mentioned: a total waste of time and effort.

When I read the letter, I got flashbacks to the first time I encountered a brazen ninja, a jerk of a party/guildmember, etc-- in short, people who seem to get their rocks off on causing other people a headache. And I remember being told afterward by well-meaning people that it was all "just a game" and the loot that was ninja'd will drop again and, after all, it's just pixels, all that. Being pissed off and rather irrational at the time, I retorted that it was a waste of my time and effort; how can such people exist, anyway?

The kicker was when someone mentioned I was exerting further effort and wasting even more time by complaining about that jackass and this asshole and everyone who has offended me since. As hokey as this sounds, the hate and anger and resentment you're feeling only hurts one person: yourself. As much as you'd love to see some sort of retribution wrought upon the bad guy, some sign that justice exists, it's just not worth it. Even if you were to track down your former GM and give him a piece of your mind, at best you may be met with a "So what? What are you going to do about it?" and you're still frustrated at the end.

As Sunaseni points out, it sounds like you've found a core group of people in along the journey and they seem to be good, like-minded individuals. With your former guild, it's a harsh lesson learned but you'll never give yourself the chance to move on from it (and apply what you've learned) if you keep agonizing over it. You will be much happier and much better off in the long run.

Best of luck.

I have serious issue with this response on several fronts. The first of which is very easy to convey: "time is money, friend" (As Basil points out often in his column). Even the way we choose to spend our time on leisure activities can be quantified monetarily and saving a few g at the expense of several hours is a huge opportunity cost. In other words, if you had dedicated those countless hours helping out with the guild to farming gold instead and then selling it illegally you would probably have in excess of $100.

The second is that humans have an innate tendency towards retribution. It is an evolutionary stable system and the one that humans have happened to adopt as a majority. The individual rules and morality don't matter as much as that when someone does something that detracts from the general welfare of the people, we feel they should be punished. There are scales of this too: those afflicted with a "Just World" or "Strict Father" outlook are inclined to believe that someone living in poverty is lazy, or that someone who got into a road accident was inattentive, or that a country afflicted by a natural disaster had an unusual preponderance of homosexuals... While the bleeding hearts campaign for nuclear disarmament, spending more money on preventing the causes of crime and animal rights or whatnot. The overall phenomenon of attributing blame can be seen in the personification of technology when it goes wrong: yelling "stupid computer" or "($*%ing Blizz!" doesn't help much but it does make us feel better. Then of course there are the despots who punish the slightest perceived insult and the psychopaths who contravene the system entirely... At any rate, there's some psychic dissonance felt whenever a bad deed goes unpunished.

But luckily, I recall reading on WoW Insider that Blizzard has taken steps to reimburse guild banks in the event of ninjaing before. If anyone could find the link to the article you could use it as a precedent for Blizz and go straight to the court of appeals... Or something.

One thing they've pointed out at great pains in the latest Meet the Devs is that they wont punish abuses by the guild masters. I think a system of checks and balances revolving around the officer core would neatly illustrate the superiority of a democratic system. That way important decisions like gdisbands would have to be ratified by a large percentage of currently active officers. Guilds could choose to opt into such systems so it wouldn't cause complications for alt guilds but if you were joining a leveling guild you'd feel more secure in one that made democratic decisions. Our guild doesn't have anything formal like that but we tend towards it with decisions such as transferring guild leadership.

The fact that a GL can empty out a guild bank, is one of the biggest reasons that I don't put anything "valuable" in the guild bank. Similarly, I don't use my guild's bank for repairs, and I buy anything out of it at the market rate. I try to be as self-sufficient as I can. I provide feasts for my raid, help the alchemist with mats for cauldrons, and keep myself in raid-ready shape.

That said, when I was an officer of a guild, and had some say on the policies, I advocated for providing those services for the members. I also put my time, gold, and mats into the bank. Not everyone is as diligent as I am when it comes to being prepared, so it's good for the guild as a whole to have a healthy bank.

@ Gamerunknown

You mentioned ESS's (evolutionary stable systems). /hug

You win.