We had our first guildbank rapist visiting us during the weekend. He joined, even signed to the forum which I find pretty remarkable, and took all he could from the guildbank. And left. As I noticed the 'theft' in 5 minutes, I found out he had joined another guild already. Well, contacted their officer, but as I checked, he's still in the guild. Zenazok, Dwarf Paladin, your name is to be known by all I contact in Thunderhorn EU.
His gain was not that big, because I had kind of anticipated this kind of conduct on the Ally side. Sorry to say, but I haven't seen this many idiots in the Horde side during all the time I have been playing in there, compared to the few months in Ally. The main reason may be the fact that there are so many more players on Ally that there is more room for idiocy, but I doubt it. This miscreant was way too clever to be just the average 12-16 year old teen, and he clearly knew exactly what he was doing.
There has been some discussion in the Blogosphere already about how to make the guildspace and community to last longer. The ideas have ranged from the obvious Guildhousing (alongside with Player Housing) to toons getting special Guild loyalty bonuses or even loyalty gear/fluff. I vote for AYE to all the ideas and even the first implementation that would give the guilds the possibility to really REWARD the long term members.
Now as the situation has gone into such that the guilds are extremely easy to set up and there are new guilds popping up like there was no tomorrow, the value of guilds as whole has gone down considerably. At least in the levelling stage the benefits are negligible, and in raiding stage the support of the guild is mainly to artificially set up a team to tackle the end game bosses. I say artificially, because the same group could work without committing to a single guild. There is no real benefit in belonging to a guild, really. Except for fun and laughter.
I have always hated the guildhoppers. And I always will. After all this even more so.
Die.