Ranks and titles

Most guilds pile ten ranks on top of each other and then wonder why nobody knows what a “Veteran” can do. We split the problem in two. Ranks are permissions, there are very few of them, and they mirror the in-game ranks one to one. Titles are recognition, there can be many, and they never touch permissions. The research on rank design says a clearly defined system provides stability, that very few officers is correct, and that “thank you” ranks which recognize loyalty without granting power are the ones members actually value. verified

Ranks (permissions)

This table is the long version of the “How ranks work” embed pinned in start-here.

Rank	Who	How earned	What it lets you do
WoW Forever	Anyone in the Discord who opts in	Self-serve: the onboarding question or the wing button. Hit the same button to leave	See the wing. Nothing else. Roster tools and rank-gated channels stay hidden
Guild Member	Everyone vetted and in the guild in game	An officer grants it after you join in game. Friends: two weeks, attend one guild thing, your buddy signs off. Strangers: the trial	Guild chat, roster tools, signups, the bank donation list, voting in guild votes
Officer	1 to 2 people; up to 5 with departments	Appointed by the GM after a season as a pod captain or event host. One-year term, renewable. See Officer handbook	Invite, promote to Member, edit notes and MOTD, officer chat, run votes, see the ledger
Guild Master	1	Founder. Backup GM named in the charter	Everything, plus disband and promote to Officer, which vanilla reserves for the leader vanilla baseline
Raider / Trial Raider	The raid core	Added only when raids open. Raider after a raid trial; see the scorecard on Recruitment and trials	Raid signups, raid chat, contested-loot priority per Loot rules
Alt	In-game only	“Alt of X” in the guild note	Mains first on everything

Rules that keep the ladder honest:

Ranks mirror the game. If you are an Officer in Discord you are an Officer in game and vice versa. When the two disagree, the in-game rank is wrong and gets fixed.
Onboarding roles are never ranks. Discord onboarding answers can be edited by the member at any time, so nothing permission-critical ever lives there. verified
No promotion by volume. Messages sent, hours played, and parses are not promotion criteria. Trust, consistency, and whether people like grouping with you are.
Officers are a job, not a reward. The test before promoting someone is a season as a pod captain: see whether they go power-hungry before handing them permissions. verified
Ranks we deliberately skip: Class Lead, Veteran-as-rank, Backup, Social, region roles, profession roles. Titles cover all of those without adding permissions.

Titles (recognition)

Titles live in two places: the in-game guild note (visible to everyone in the guild) and a Discord role icon. They are awarded, never bought, and never tied to activity volume alone. They exist because the game gives you no reason to stay in a guild (“typing /gquit is enough”) and attachment has to be built socially. verified

Title	Criterion	Cadence
Founder	In the guild on Founding Day (the day the charter is signed in game)	Once
Veteran	One year of continuous membership	Yearly
Elder	Two years, plus ran a pod or an event	Yearly
Pod Captain	Current captain of a pod (see Rituals and calendar)	Seasonal
[Season Name] Champion	Won the seasonal contest	Seasonal
Wipe Historian	Keeps the Chronicle and retells the story of the week	Monthly, nominated by members, confirmed at the monthly meeting
Bank Goblin	Runs a bank alt and the ledger	Monthly, same process
Summoner General	The warlock who is always there with the stone	Monthly, same process
Cartographer	Unlocked every flight path, screenshot proof	Monthly, same process
Consumables Fairy	Keeps the progression-night consumables bank stocked	Monthly, same process
Voice of Reason	The person who says “let’s go again” instead of ranting	Monthly, same process
MVP of the Week	Nominated by members, picked by a rotating non-officer	Weekly
Returning Hero	Came back after three or more months away	On return, no questions asked

Why Returning Hero matters most

This is a guild of returning players. The research on churn says a member whose regular groupmates go quiet goes quiet too, and that leaving a guild costs nothing so returning has to be made worth something. verified The title makes coming back a celebrated event. Nobody asks where you were. An officer grants it the day you log back in, and the monthly Hall of Deeds post names you.

Title rules

Service titles (Bank Goblin through Voice of Reason) are nominated by anyone in the tavern and confirmed at the monthly meeting. Officers cannot nominate themselves.
A title can be held by more than one person. Two Summoner Generals is fine.
Titles are never removed as punishment. They lapse when the person stops doing the thing, quietly, at the next monthly update.
The rotating MVP picker is deliberately not an officer, and the same person is not picked two weeks running. The health metric is the number of distinct MVP winners over twelve weeks; fewer than six means the same people are winning and the picker rotation is broken.

How a rank change happens

An officer proposes it in officer chat with one line of reasoning.
For Member: any officer can grant after the trial conditions are met.
For Officer: the GM decides, after the candidate has run a pod or events for a season.
The change is applied in game and in Discord the same day, and logged with one line in the officer log.
Demotions follow the conflict ladder on the Officer handbook, never a raid-night decision.

Unknown as of 2026-09-24

Forever’s rank count and permission set. Vanilla has five default ranks, up to ten, with invite, remove, promote, demote, chat, notes and MOTD permissions. Assumed inherited. vanilla baseline
Whether guild notes and officer notes exist and are visible as in vanilla, which the title layer depends on in game. The Discord role icon works regardless.
Whether Discord Server Tags will be available to the parent server. If so, the guild tag is free identity and joins the title layer.