I'd just like to add my own 2 copper to the thread after reading the negative/opposing replies, and knowing/interacting w/ Luthian myself.
I will start by saying that Luthian has my vote for a number of reasons. The biggest issue that has been brought up is" taxes". Which I think is just kind of silly tbh. Especially w/ all the misinformation that's been thrown into the mix. One poster who leads you to believe that all of Luth's taxes are above 5% is just not true. Only a few such as the travel are set to that while the bulk of the others are set to low /average set edicts. Another thing that I have seen numerous times in game, even though it was from well known trolls talkin about said taxes(one of which found its way to this thread), Luthian has always been open to suggestion, listened to everyone's points/concerns even when they were mainly belligerent trolls trying to get a rise out of him. Despite it all he always remained calm, friendly, and tried to reach a mutual compromise. I've even witnessed numerous times in world chat that he'd change the rates to what the person felt was appropriate if they gave an actual legitimate reason, of which the answers were always cause a & b do, or "principle".
Its been my experience that Luthian has always been fair, and willingly gives his time to discuss any issues ppl have fairly and cordially even when they're doing nothing but cursing him out on such a weak point without giving any credit to the things Luthian does do.
The other thing that was called into question was that Luthian has held no Events. Which is not true at all, I see him daily in his area doing activities, ones that you've seen Luthian talk about giving out more gold to people that he gets from all of this tax money some of you believe he gets. Its actually very much the contrary(a lot coming out of his own personal pocket), all while grinding and farming dailies to make sure everything is up for everyone at all times. You might notice the activities/events more if you were in the area watching his Vanarch chat.
Also another thing that not only Luthian does but many of the members do, is watch LFG channels,to help run lowwer lvls through there story quests and dungeons, help kill BaMs for their quests, and even give materials or drops they might need for a quest or items that they could use as upgrades, I've witnessed this not only through chat and passing them in low and mid lvl area's, but received help without even asking several times while playing lowwer lvl alts. Something I haven't experienced myself by any other guilds.
And despite all that some of you hone in on and have tunnel vision on two edicts set at 5 or so %. Despite he's made no money from it(which was never his intention). All the time they sacrifice helping people, and having mini games they do daily if your in the zone where they give out gold usually no less then 50g and valuable items. But even with all that, it evidently makes him a bad vanarch...I fail to see the logic in your points. And the argument that other guilds have theirs set to 1%...I would think it'd be common sense that, its because they can do that and still make a lot of gold given that those places are much higher traffic area's....
At any rate, I thank you Luthian for all you've done, despite being raged on by really only a select few, you remain cordial and nice. And even though all the things you do may go unnoticed by some, It hasn't by a large majority of ppl who are thankful for all you've done, and again you have my vote and support!!
I don't much care about taxes, since they don't amount to that much, and I don't care about special events. All I care about is having spec vendors, broker and, in low-middle zones, the trainers being available. On a quiet server like ours, running for election and keeping the lights on is a pain in the butt and I would not be surprised to see guilds who want to keep taxes low drop out of the vanarch business altogether instead. Val Elenium (Twisted) already only has the broker open. At least Val Tirkai has all the useful facilities running.
Only a couple of people with nothing better to do trolled Luthien in chat, and I didn't see anything wrong with how he replied. Other guilds jacked up taxes during Nexus events and those trolls didn't seem to mind that, so the attacks on Luthien certainly were not on principle.
I trolled him because he's an [filtered] with poor public skills who treats people as though he deserves to be voted in and we're lucky to have him.His own peiople were in my pm upset about his behavior, I had more than three pm'ing me at one time, feeding me, a troll. Thank you ::burp::
Apparently they were hearing from a variety of people not just me and were hoping he'd lower the taxes, that they were going to tell him to.
At this point, it's not even the tax, it's his attitude towards other people on server, his snivelling need to be a pretentious jerk and make things personal when it's not necessary to do so. So now he's getting what he deserves.
As to support, I have spoken to a significant amount of people who are avoiding going to his area because they don't want to support him or his guild, and are not pursuing dailies because of it.
Personally, I hope he's re-elected, because I suspect it's going to financially cost him/his guild more in the long run to keep the place and his guild will eventually implode on itself with that kind of leadership.. or it'll just end up being a close knit circle-tug of the intellectually decapitated.
Either way, other places are benefiting from people going there to farm/etc.
So yeah, spend another 3000, then all of your days struggling as a small guild to maintain the points you need to open up shops for people who avoid your place. I think it's a brilliant idea.
I've seen this same problem in another game named Aika. They have crappy politics in there also and have these same crappy arguments. I think it's a bad idea to have such a thing in a game where it's supposed to be fun. I'm not seeing the fun in this. Way too much work and always people crying on both sides. Get rid of the damn thing. Add in more pvp. Add more armor choices and looks. This is the stupidest thing I've seen in any game and always leads trouble like this. Why not just add guild lands? Another thing, why would anyone agree on 1% tax?
