So I created an alliance and have over 30 people in it when the servers went down, I read that if your inactive for a month that someone can take over the leadership role. Does this mean I'll have to jump straight back on during the open beta so that I can keep ownership?

Okay, follow this list.

1. Did you promote any of those who joined to officers? Yes( ) No( )

2. The condition for this change in leaders is specifically: If the leader of the alliance is inactive for longer than a month, then any officer may promote themselves to leader.

3. If you said yes, then you might want to get back online as soon as possible. If you said no, then you should be fine, but still, log in as soon as possible anyway in order to check on the state of your alliance.

Perhaps a JP player with experience with this could answer, if the inactive owner logs in after that 30 days, do they get to assume ownership again? Or do they have to be given ownership back by the officer who took it?

As long as no officer self-promotes to leader, when the leader is active after 30 days, they're still leader. Otherwise, that rank would have to be passed back from the promoted officer.

I have seen one case of this actually being used negatively, thought not personally while in-game.

Yes I promoted 3 to officer, so if I log straight back in when the open beta starts then they shouldn't be able to promote themselves to leader?

If you get on before them, I would say yes.

Do they know that they can?

Probably not, I'll just make sure I get on as soon as the open beta starts. So it should effectively restart the 30 day period then when I log in if non of them have promoted themselves to leader?

Yeah, it should.