Of Clan Funds and Honesty

Finally, a long overdue post. I saw this thread earlier and though I had to close the thread to prevent flaming, the threadstarter does have a point. Many clans have broken up due to in-game monetary issues, and not just clans, friendships have suffered as well.

Yet this issue is not as simple as it sounds. It is a common practice for clans to solicit donations from their members to have a working clan fund come TW bidding time, for it is grossly unfair to the clan master if the clan master alone would shell out the payment. Then once the war starts, there would be costs incurred in the building of the towers and the hiring of the catapults. All these would easliy amount to several million every week, and the returns from the territory would not be enough to cover all expenses. What's worse is had the clan lost, they would not be even able to recoup even a little Yuan just for the effort. Should there be any extra Yuan left over, it will be kept for the next week's war.

This is why some clans break up--thinking that the returns from the territory are more than enough to cover their expenses, they would still ask for a salary. It ends up (as the threadstarter suggested) as a paid mercenary service, and nothing more. Once the payments stop, it's time to go on and look for another clan with more yuan to burn.

They forget the true essence of a clan, its basic meaning--a group of players fighting for one common goal.

Transparency also figures in this case. To avoid these conflicts, clan masters (since they are in charge of the clan funds) should be transparent with what they spend the clan money for. Say every end of the war the master would be able to account for the bid, the tower-building and the catapult costs. It would also help to have a list of those who made donations to the clan fund and make it accessible to the public. That way, no one would complain about the money being misspent.

All in all, it boils down to trust. Some people join clans just for the name, expecting that with a well-known clan, becoming rich and famous will follow. They join not knowing the clan's officers, policies and regulations--that is why we require clans in the Garrison sections to illustrate what their clan is like so that players would avoid making misinformed decisions. When these issues arise, then chaos erupts. They fail to realize that building a clan takes more than having the best high-levelled players in the server; they must also learn to work together as a team and trust their clan master's decision (and yes, sharing the expenses is part of teamwork). The clan master, too, must listen to his members.

It also reflects our views IRL--we live in a society where corruption where trust is hard to earn and easy to lose. And we can't blame people for not easily trusting others, for sad to say, honesty and transparency are now rare traits.

What we can do is to start the culture of honesty ingame. Then bring it IRL as well, and hopefully change society for the better.