Guild charter

The short charter pinned in Discord’s start-here channel is seven lines. This page is the long version those seven lines point at. Nothing here contradicts the short version; it explains what each line means when something goes wrong at 11 pm on a raid night. Read it once when you join, and again the first time you are annoyed at someone.

1. Purpose and vibe

We are a friends-and-family guild playing World of Warcraft: Forever. Most of us know each other from outside the game. Many of us are coming back after years away. Expected size is 30 to 80 people, casual to semi-hardcore, on one ruleset and one faction chosen by vote in the launch-plan channel.

The research behind this charter is blunt about why guilds die: from the inside, through absent leaders, loot fights, cliques, and schedule mismatch, far more often than from anything the game does. The guilds that last share one trait: a core of real friends that predates the game. We already have that. The charter’s job is to protect it. verified

Seriousness level, in plain words: we wipe, we laugh, we try again. Nobody gets yelled at. We still prepare, still show up on time, and still want to kill bosses. Effort matters more than hours.

What we are not:

Not a world-first or race guild. We will not compete with pre-formed private-server veterans in week one, and we do not want to.
Not a GDKP host, a gold-split raid, or a boosting service. Blizzard has banned GDKP in Forever and has said it will punish gold buying with permanent account loss. verified
Not a five-nights-a-week guild. Two scheduled raid nights is the ceiling for the core. Everything else is optional and labeled optional.
Not the finance server. WoW talk stays in the WoW wing. Finance talk stays out of it.

2. Ranks and how they are granted

Ranks are permissions. They mirror in-game ranks one to one. Nobody self-assigns, buys, or begs for a rank. The full ladder and the separate titles layer are on Ranks and titles.

Rank	Who	How it is granted
WoW Forever	Anyone in the Discord who opts in	Self-serve in onboarding or the wing button. It only means you can see the wing
Guild Member	Everyone in the guild in game	An officer grants it after you join in game and clear the trial (friends: two weeks, show up once; see Recruitment and trials)
Officer	1 to 2 people, up to 5 with departments	Appointed by the GM, term of one year, renewable. Runs things when the GM is asleep or tilted
Guild Master	1	Founder. Owns the charter, the bank ledger, and the final appeal
Raider / Trial	Raid core	Added only when raids open. Not before

A backup GM is named in this charter (see section 9) and holds an in-game character with the permissions to take over. If the GM is silent for 30 days with no note, the backup GM takes leadership. This is written down because Forever has not announced any automatic inactive-leader replacement; retail’s 90-day rule may not exist here. unverified

3. Schedule and attendance

Show up when you sign up. A signup is a promise to the other nine or nineteen people.
Absence is a status, not a DM. Post it in the absences channel (or set it in Raid-Helper) before the deadline. The deadline is 24 hours before start when a bench swap is needed, and 2 hours before start at the absolute latest. Absence posted in time is excused, no explanation required.
Attended means signed up and present within 10 minutes of first pull, or benched and available on Discord for the full window. Bench counts as attendance.
The bar for Raiders once raids open is 80 percent of scheduled raid nights over a rolling four weeks, with absences posted. Trials are held to 75 percent during their trial. Nobody is counted against a night they excused in time. verified (common guild practice; the exact numbers are ours)
Real life wins. Kids, work, partners, and sleep come first. Raids end on time. There is no guilt for an absence posted in time, and nobody will ping you asking “are you really going to miss raid?”
Breaks are normal. Any member can declare a 2 to 4 week break without losing rank. Coming back after longer earns the Returning Hero title, not a walk of shame.
The engagement calendar (guild night, screenshot Friday, monthly meeting) is on Rituals and calendar. All of it is optional except the monthly meeting for officers.

4. Loot

Full rules with the worked rubric are on Loot rules. The charter-level rules:

Soft reserve, main spec over off spec, one item per run, with +1 tracking, for the 10 and 20 player raids until a core raid team forms.
Loot council with a written rubric once a core forms or when we host a 40. The rubric is published before the switch and never changed mid-tier.
Trials are behind members on contested main-spec items for the trial period only. The end date is stated when the trial starts.
BoE epics from raids go to the bank alt to fund consumables, unless the loot rules for that raid say otherwise.
Loot history is public. Every award is posted with the reasoning. Councils fail when decisions look arbitrary, not when they are wrong.
GDKP is banned in Forever. Do not ask. Do not run gold-split pugs on your main either; Blizzard has said it is watching gold flow. verified

5. Bench

Bench is a status, not a punishment. Benched players keep attendance credit.
The roster, including the bench, is posted 24 hours before the raid. Nobody is surprise-benched.
Rotation order is published before the tier: on farm, whoever needs nothing from the next boss sits first; on progression, a fixed rotation once the kill comp is locked; never the same person two weeks running unless they ask.
When we have overflow, the bench runs a second 10 or a dungeon night in the same voice server rather than sitting.
Performance benching is a private conversation first: what to work on, who will help, when we check again.

6. Alts

Mains first on all contested loot. Alts roll only if no main needs.
Alts carry “alt of X” in the guild note field.
Alt raids are scheduled only after the main roster has cleared the same content twice.
No more than three alts per account in the guild, which the three-character name-reservation limit enforces for us at launch anyway. unverified
Profession alts are encouraged and listed in the crafter directory.

7. Conduct and drama

The short charter says: problem with someone? Talk to them. Still a problem? Talk to an officer. The ladder is on the Officer handbook. The rules behind it:

Nothing in public channels. Officers enforce this by deleting and DMing, not by public warnings.
Performance feedback is private and specific. No public parses without the player’s consent, no performance shaming, no “raid or leave” pressure on family members.
Voice etiquette is pinned and short: push-to-talk during pulls, no backseat calling, no hot-mic rage, say “afk 60s” instead of vanishing.
No screenshots of private DMs in officer chat or anywhere else.
Pre-existing friend groups are not a rank. Newcomers’ most common complaint in the research is cliques that formed in a previous game. Pods are deliberately mixed. verified
Account sharing is prohibited. Blizzard’s EULA section 1.B.i.3 bans sharing your account or login. This applies to bank alts too; see Guild bank. verified
Conduct reports are seen by two officers, acted on within 72 hours, and the outcome is told to the reporter. The Method collapse in 2020 is the reference case for what “we handled it internally” costs. verified

8. Removal and appeals

Instant removal, no ladder: real-money trading, gold buying or selling, GDKP organizing under the guild’s name, scamming the bank, harassment, hate speech, and account sharing that puts the bank at risk.

Ladder removal: repeated no-shows without absence posts, voice conduct, and ninja-looting in pugs while wearing the tabard. The tabard is our reputation.

Inactivity: 90 days offline with no note gets a courtesy DM. Removal to the alumni list at 120 days. Never silent. Alumni can come back without awkwardness.

Appeals: 7 days, to the GM, one written reply. The GM can reverse a loot decision only for a rubric error, not for taste.

Announcements: only the fact, never the reasons. “X is no longer with us; questions to officers privately.”

Hardcore note: if any of us play the Hardcore ruleset when it arrives, deaths from disconnects or griefing are appealed to Blizzard with video proof, following Classic Hardcore community practice. The guild has no power over that appeal. vanilla baseline

9. How this charter changes

Officers can change this charter. They post in the tavern when they do, with the version number and what changed.
Loot rules never change mid-tier. Everything else can change at any monthly meeting.
Any member can propose a change at the monthly meeting or through the anonymous suggestion box.
Backup GM: named in the officer roster on Officer handbook once the guild forms in game. The /gleader handover is rehearsed once before launch week.

Change log

Version	Date	Change
1.0	2026-09-24	First full charter, expanding the seven-line short charter pinned in Discord

Unknown as of 2026-09-24

Forever’s charter cost and signature count. Classic sources conflict (9 or 10 signatures); the beta temporarily accepts zero because of a bug.
Whether Forever has any inactive-leader replacement rule. We assume none.
Whether master loot exists in Forever. The loot rules are written to survive either answer.
Number of in-game ranks and whether guild notes and officer notes work as in vanilla.