While I personally am not sure how I feel about buying/selling HM runs - I don't think I'd ever want to be carried through anything, but I've not reached the HM primal fights yet so I can't pretend to be an expert wither way - it's not against any rules. I am concerned that the audience for being carried, at least so early on in the game, does probably overlap with the audience for buying gil (the 'I want this right now' types) and so that this will probably encourage people who might have bought gil anyway to go ahead with it, but that's not actually any wrongdoing on the part of the guilds doing this.
(Though it does make it somewhat dangerous to do - Square are currently investigating a lot of players who've crossed a certain gil threshold too quickly as part of trying to track down gil sellers and buyers. No doubt most of them - people who make their gil through market trades that are logged and easy to track - will be found innocent and let go. But if, as is probably how HM runs work, you've received a lot of empty gil trades for a large amount each time? That starts to look very suspect, especially if those trades are from known gil buyers. It's not the fault of the people selling HM runs, but it does put them in a very, very risky situation.)
The selling isn't the big problem here as far as actual ingame things go, it's the sabotage. And for the most part, it looks like the accusations of sabotage are untrue, at least toward these particular players (I don't doubt that there are some incredible arses who enjoy ruining other people's fun). They're based entirely on what appears to be a joke (a dreadfully unfunny joke made in poor taste, but a joke nonetheless) made by one of the members about doing this to drive up demand for paid runs. In all of the fuss surrounding this mess - and there has been an awful lot of fuss - I've not seen one person come forward to mention any member of this FC sabotaging their run.
The other big problem, and the reason this got so out of hand, is the handling of it on Reddit. The mod in question deleted the thread in which people started discussing what was going on and in doing so essentially kicked a hornet's nest. What could have been discussion turned into people furious that they were being censored/information was being kept from them and desperate to find out 'the truth'. Since it's come out that the mod was also letting their FC see deleted posts from the Reddit (largely regarding exploits), it's safe to say they have been abusing their power anyway and should probably be un-modded. But really that has little to do with FFXIV proper.
(Unrelated: I'm not sure why people here are being so hostile toward the FFXIV reddit - I have my problems with Reddit as a whole but for the most part the FFXIV one has been nothing but civil toward us. Hell, they've even been getting excited about our events and turning up and behaving! That's more than we get from the general FFXIV community.)
(Though it does make it somewhat dangerous to do - Square are currently investigating a lot of players who've crossed a certain gil threshold too quickly as part of trying to track down gil sellers and buyers. No doubt most of them - people who make their gil through market trades that are logged and easy to track - will be found innocent and let go. But if, as is probably how HM runs work, you've received a lot of empty gil trades for a large amount each time? That starts to look very suspect, especially if those trades are from known gil buyers. It's not the fault of the people selling HM runs, but it does put them in a very, very risky situation.)
The selling isn't the big problem here as far as actual ingame things go, it's the sabotage. And for the most part, it looks like the accusations of sabotage are untrue, at least toward these particular players (I don't doubt that there are some incredible arses who enjoy ruining other people's fun). They're based entirely on what appears to be a joke (a dreadfully unfunny joke made in poor taste, but a joke nonetheless) made by one of the members about doing this to drive up demand for paid runs. In all of the fuss surrounding this mess - and there has been an awful lot of fuss - I've not seen one person come forward to mention any member of this FC sabotaging their run.
The other big problem, and the reason this got so out of hand, is the handling of it on Reddit. The mod in question deleted the thread in which people started discussing what was going on and in doing so essentially kicked a hornet's nest. What could have been discussion turned into people furious that they were being censored/information was being kept from them and desperate to find out 'the truth'. Since it's come out that the mod was also letting their FC see deleted posts from the Reddit (largely regarding exploits), it's safe to say they have been abusing their power anyway and should probably be un-modded. But really that has little to do with FFXIV proper.
(Unrelated: I'm not sure why people here are being so hostile toward the FFXIV reddit - I have my problems with Reddit as a whole but for the most part the FFXIV one has been nothing but civil toward us. Hell, they've even been getting excited about our events and turning up and behaving! That's more than we get from the general FFXIV community.)
