>we were accused of the same thing, stealing players. what actually took
>place was that the people doing the dragons, planes, and gods were a

[...]

>also organize a raid much faster. after the 5 main players formed the
>guild, they selected people who they wanted, voted, then asked them if they
>also wanted to join the new guild. once the guild had its initial base of

If you ask someone in a different guild if they want to join yours, IMHO,
you ARE stealing players from that other guild. If they are not currently
IN a guild and/or ask you if they can join your guild, then you aren't
stealing, it was their choice.

My friend had never expressed any interest in leaving Phoenix, but got
courted heavily simply because they wanted more bards until she made
it clear she wasn't interested.

It is considered exclusive for a high level guild to do raids, etc
by themselves. Yet here, if you ask others to come along, you are
saying that justifies creating a new guild with all those people
in the same guild, and asking them out?

In our case, Phoenix WAS capable of doing planes, and other high
level raids pretty much alone. We asked people along because they
were friends of the guild who just happened to be in other guilds
(there was even an entire different guild that was effectively a
"sister guild") but didn't accept random hangers-on unless they filled
a slot we needed at the moment (And then, it really seemed to be a
depends case). AND they got screamed at for not allowing the random
hangers-on as being elitist, etc. Sometimes you just can't win
no matter what you do.