I’ve been playing Guild Wars since Prophecy, having purchased and played all the expansions for the original game. In that game, acquiring a Guild Hall was a part of the base game. It became more refined as the game developed, and expansions brought more options for Guild Hall locations. We enjoyed our Guild Hall as both a starting and end point for our excursion out into Tyria. Certainly, we had to pay a price for services provided by our Guild Hall, but it was in a form of currency to which we all had access. Our Guild Hall was an excellent point to meet and greet, show off new acquisitions and styles, make plans for our activities, and review our most recent adventures. Be aware, we have a small guild in Guild Wars – mainly close friends.
When GW2 was announced, guild members were excited about the prospect of starting our adventures anew in the Tyria of tomorrow. Guild Halls were announced as being part of GW2, but were absent at launch – with a promise that they would be forthcoming.
Three years pass without Guild Halls being introduced into GW2. The expansion Heart of Thorns is announced and states that it will incorporate Guild Halls. Here lies the problem – why does it require ownership of an expansion (yes, I know the work around that the expansion includes the base game) to have a feature promised with the base game?
I understand the concept of having Guild Hall related items associated with the expansion (including locations), but why is it SOLELY in the HoT? After all, it was meant to be part of the base game.
Our GW2 guild, like our GW guild, is small – still mainly close friends trying to share some time together. It seems ArenaNet disapproves of small guilds (remember, actions speak louder than words) – Influence (easily accomplished through game play) replaced by Favor (requiring actively seeking out opportunities for Favor, with the advantage being given to larger guilds since difficulty is dependent on Guild size – requiring 3 for “Easy”, recommending 10 for “Medium”, and 15 for “Hard” missions).
This past weekend, myself and two guild-mates attempted to acquire our Guild Hall. 100 gold – not a problem. 150 Favor – problem number 1. First, could not find the NPC to trade Influence for Favor. After several searches, found a reference that NPC might not spawn if not enough Influence was available to trade for Favor and that the trade off might be 10,000 Influence to get 50 Favor. We had 4000-ish Influence – what’s the point of leaving that Influence with us when we cannot use it for anything? Also, such information in the wiki would have saved some time and effort.
It turned out that the only way that we could gain Favor (as a small guild with three people) was to do the “Easy” PvP Conquest. Okay, so we went to do that only to find out that Conquest maps are not available in PvP until Rank 10. So we were forced to do Stronghold until my two fellow guild-mates made Rank 10. Then when we did our first Conquest map, we scored more than was need for the “Easy” goal – 330, 240, and 175, but failed to be awarded the reward. One guild member offered that maybe we had to wait for the mission timer to expire, so we played anther Conquest map – not as big a score as the first time, but still well over the required combined score of 300. During that map our timer expired, and NO reward was given.
After further research, we discovered that in addition to being in the same party, we needed to create AND party as a Guild Team in order or get recognized for doing the activity as a Guild. Of course, by this time dailies had reset, so we had to participate in two Conquest maps to get our combined score (PvP is not something we enjoy doing).
Fortunately, all three of us had purchased HoT, so now we could secure a Guild Hall. Did I mention that there were only three of us? We are not die-hard/hard-core players.
SPOILER ALERT: If you have not tried to secure your Guild Hall yet, take some time and watch some of the videos from the Internet about this.
The bright side of trying to secure our Guild Hall – the number of Maws/Knightwraiths is scalable to the number of players in the instance. We had done some research and found this out.
Everything else about this endeavor falls into the dark side. First, the map is HUGE – not just in two dimensions, but in three – requiring that players have at least a minimal level of Mastery in Gliders. Second, you are on a timer of 3 minutes, 30 seconds to find a Maw’s location, defeat its two vinetenders (while contending with the rest of the mob), AND defeat the Maw. Third you need to do this FIVE times. Fourth, the Maws locations are random each time. Sixth – well let’s just note that we never got that far.
All told we spent over 10 frustrating and fruitless hours trying to do this – six getting the Favor, the rest attempting to secure “our” Guild Hall. We read about players claiming to have done this in small group (even a reference to someone solo-ing it). Our hats are off to them on their accomplishments!
Some have suggested that the LFG tool should be used. I understand that help is available, but why should a smaller guild need to have to use non-guild members to acquire a Guild Hall?
Now we find ourselves having to research how to optimize our builds so that we might have a chance at success at a future date. GW2 is a game, and should be played for the pleasure one can derive from their in-game experiences. References have been made to being able to enjoy some casual gaming, which is possible as long as you don’t want to acquire a Guild Hall.
My apologies on the longwinded-ness of this post, but this experience has made me question how ArenaNet values smaller, casual guilds. It seems that they simply suffer our existence.