Guild Wars 2

It was a proactive way of contributing to your guild. You could see progress being made with every activity you were doing in-game… now it’s all tied to weekly guild missions which aren’t super fun. Playing HoT areas, raids, PvP’ing in a season… so many ways of earning Influences which never had a chance to come true.

Maybe the old system wasn’t perfect, but the new one isn’t either. Here’s wishing they could balance between the two…

I agree, it was interesting to see.

I was and still am profoundly angry that they did away will small guilds. Two of us used to be able to craft some basic banners, and use them on weekends we planned to harvest, or run world bosses, or whatever the banners helped. All influence driven.

I had no issue with ANET creating a large guild system, with lots of benefits we would never get. However, it was unconscionable to kill off our benefits. What could they possibly hurt? The software was already in place, nothing need be added.

Whenever I see ANET quarterly declining profit sheets, I think on this and several similar issues. It is much better to grow new opportunity for the players than kill off things they’ve worked a long time for.

GMs felt like an addon benefit back then, now it’s mandatory to grow the guild hall. The difference is that the building blocks were earned doing whatever activities you liked, and now you must do GMs… and they’re far from being fixed either way… not to talk about small guilds. (I have one)

yeh would be nice if you could gain small amounts of Favor/Aetherium for doing

Raids / ranked PvP / World Events / Fractals / Dungeons / Events

while representing a Guild

We lived on the daily log in amounts, mostly, so it took a while to accrue and we spent it on things we could use, like banner generation. I recall a something like 24 hour gathering boost, which we used when we would spend a while gathering crafting mats.

We never took the 1 hour boosts, as it took too long to accrue their cost vs the benefit gained.

With the new system you rarely see banners anymore. People used to put them out all the time. I used to make banners with my small guild and put them out occasionally also to benefit anyone who wanted the buff. Not any more since I get them now so rarely. I only put them out for big occasions like the Lunar Festival for the magic find buff. The way it’s set up is a loss to the community and a loss to a way to show community spirit and helpfulness.

While I do prefer the way Guild Missions work now (restart them on a timer rather than a built item that took days to complete) I do miss the Influence system too.. Would definitely be nice with a mix.

Can’t you just buy banners now? From Guild Commendation Trader or something?

I miss our guild playing the content we want and earning guild influence for completing events. My guild is so very tired of the current guild missions…they’ve received very little attention or updates of any kind. Would it be game breaking to earn a small amount of guild favor for completing events and logging in?

Najten.2418:

Can’t you just buy banners now? From Guild Commendation Trader or something?

As I understand it, only if a member of a large guild. To earn the tokens, I have to run GM’s with that guild, representing them, and then the traders that sell them appear to be located in their guild hall exclusively.

So our guild lost what it had worked to get, and we were displeased.

Oh, well I have no idea how we got them, just noticed that they appeared on the Guild Commendation Trader that I have available in the Royal Terrace..

I also checked if they remained when I represented a smaller guild (my personal bank guild with 3 members that just had enough influence to unlock some vault tabs), and they do.
The Guild Commendation Trader is also available in for instance the Guild Initiative Office for my bank guild (since it does not even have a Guild Hall).. :o

So, i have a small guild as well, most of the guildhall, we are currently at Level 34 i believe, was built with two people, one of which was me.

I will say that i find it sad that influence is gone but i actually enjoyed building the guildhall, it takes long, yes, but on the other hand, at least i, have a long time goal with this.
It will take me even longer to get my scribe anywhere, or the guildhall to max lvl at that, but in parts i want to say that is due to certain bottlenecks, like the fact that you gain way too little flax-seeds but need like 8K of them for a single lower level upgrade.

Again, in the long run i enjoy the building, but i get the frustration at the same time.
The system does favor larger guilds, not sure how this could be solved so that smaller guilds don’t feel like they fall behind because influence was easier to gain for larger guilds as well.

The downside to influence is the pressure of guilds to get people to rep. I’m happier now because it doesn’t matter if people rep. I never wanted to care about guild rep and I never had a rep policy but there were times when fewer people were repping than not repping and it could be frustrating.

If you’re going to have a multi-guild system, why make the guidls compete for rep?

Vayne.8563:

The downside to influence is the pressure of guilds to get people to rep. I’m happier now because it doesn’t matter if people rep. I never wanted to care about guild rep and I never had a rep policy but there were times when fewer people were repping than not repping and it could be frustrating.

If you’re going to have a multi-guild system, why make the guidls compete for rep?

Also agree here, good points. I did think it was fun getting a few points here and there for events and what not, that system was kind of fun to me.

They took influence away to kill off micro guilds. A shame imo.

I prefer options, removing influence removed that option which many people liked. If influence isn’t your thing it doesn’t mean it should be removed to only please you, consider that others liked that way it worked.

DoctorDing.5890:

They took influence away to kill off micro guilds. A shame imo.

Not sure I agree. There were a lot of complaints about having to rep. It seems like influence was at odds with the multi-guild system, so they changed it. I think the micro-guild affect was a side affect. More like collateral damage, than something specifically intended.

I’m not sure how anyone can definitively say why they did it unless they were there when the decision to do it was made.

Vayne.8563:

DoctorDing.5890:

They took influence away to kill off micro guilds. A shame imo.

Not sure I agree. There were a lot of complaints about having to rep. It seems like influence was at odds with the multi-guild system, so they changed it. I think the micro-guild affect was a side affect. More like collateral damage, than something specifically intended.

I’m not sure how anyone can definitively say why they did it unless they were there when the decision to do it was made.

Basing my conclusions based off other things GW2 does, it does seem like they removed it to kill off personal guilds so people couldn’t use it as additional storage.

They have a 10 mail limit for mail from players so people can’t use it as additional storage.

They only have an option for take all in the auction house presumably for the same reason. It’s not difficult to add an option to take items individually, as other games do.

Personal guilds allowed for a lot of extra free storage, which goes against ANet’s goal, to get people to use the gem store to buy additional storage.

Agreed. This and he obscene drain on the market for resources has very negatively impacted the community more than it “fixed” anything or made it more approachable to new players.

I’m sure they could find a place for both, how much damage if someone got 1 favor, or 0.5 favor doing events or something?

Valento.9852:

I’m sure they could find a place for both, how much damage if someone got 1 favor, or 0.5 favor doing events or something?

Agreed, but I fear modern games devs have forgotten those of us who love being able to very S-L-O-W-L-Y accumulate stuff by just playing.

Applies to favour and also to other stuff. Want quick mastery points? Then graft away until you drop. Happy to get 1 MP per month? Then just play.

Everything you do in game should progress you a little. I feel to have stalled a bit.

Vampire.8654:

Vayne.8563:

DoctorDing.5890:

They took influence away to kill off micro guilds. A shame imo.

Not sure I agree. There were a lot of complaints about having to rep. It seems like influence was at odds with the multi-guild system, so they changed it. I think the micro-guild affect was a side affect. More like collateral damage, than something specifically intended.

I’m not sure how anyone can definitively say why they did it unless they were there when the decision to do it was made.

Basing my conclusions based off other things GW2 does, it does seem like they removed it to kill off personal guilds so people couldn’t use it as additional storage.

They have a 10 mail limit for mail from players so people can’t use it as additional storage.

They only have an option for take all in the auction house presumably for the same reason. It’s not difficult to add an option to take items individually, as other games do.

Personal guilds allowed for a lot of extra free storage, which goes against ANet’s goal, to get people to use the gem store to buy additional storage.

Talk about confirmation bias. People have complained about many things that Anet has changed. Surely there were easier ways to get rid of the personal banking thing than changing influence to something else.

They could have simply, if they wanted, made the minimum guild size 10.

Because everyone who had personal banks before still has them. The logic doesn’t really hold up.

Vayne.8563:

Vampire.8654:

Vayne.8563:

DoctorDing.5890:

They took influence away to kill off micro guilds. A shame imo.

Not sure I agree. There were a lot of complaints about having to rep. It seems like influence was at odds with the multi-guild system, so they changed it. I think the micro-guild affect was a side affect. More like collateral damage, than something specifically intended.

I’m not sure how anyone can definitively say why they did it unless they were there when the decision to do it was made.

Basing my conclusions based off other things GW2 does, it does seem like they removed it to kill off personal guilds so people couldn’t use it as additional storage.

They have a 10 mail limit for mail from players so people can’t use it as additional storage.

They only have an option for take all in the auction house presumably for the same reason. It’s not difficult to add an option to take items individually, as other games do.

Personal guilds allowed for a lot of extra free storage, which goes against ANet’s goal, to get people to use the gem store to buy additional storage.

Talk about confirmation bias. People have complained about many things that Anet has changed. Surely there were easier ways to get rid of the personal banking thing than changing influence to something else.

They could have simply, if they wanted, made the minimum guild size 10.

Because everyone who had personal banks before still has them. The logic doesn’t really hold up.

Cause it’s not as simple as saying “Hey everyone, with the update of guild halls we’re deleting all guilds with only 1 member in them!” That’d kitten a ton of people off who store stuff in there. Additionally, locking everyone’s guild until they cleaned their guild bank out would have a similar reaction. The easiest way to handle it with little protest is to do what they did, make it more difficult going forward. It’s called grandfathering.

Me too because my achievement progress for it is eternally locked and teasing me so close to being finished.

I wish A.net would do something about that.

Vampire.8654:

Vayne.8563:

Vampire.8654:

Vayne.8563:

DoctorDing.5890:

They took influence away to kill off micro guilds. A shame imo.

Not sure I agree. There were a lot of complaints about having to rep. It seems like influence was at odds with the multi-guild system, so they changed it. I think the micro-guild affect was a side affect. More like collateral damage, than something specifically intended.

I’m not sure how anyone can definitively say why they did it unless they were there when the decision to do it was made.

Basing my conclusions based off other things GW2 does, it does seem like they removed it to kill off personal guilds so people couldn’t use it as additional storage.

They have a 10 mail limit for mail from players so people can’t use it as additional storage.

They only have an option for take all in the auction house presumably for the same reason. It’s not difficult to add an option to take items individually, as other games do.

Personal guilds allowed for a lot of extra free storage, which goes against ANet’s goal, to get people to use the gem store to buy additional storage.

Talk about confirmation bias. People have complained about many things that Anet has changed. Surely there were easier ways to get rid of the personal banking thing than changing influence to something else.

They could have simply, if they wanted, made the minimum guild size 10.

Because everyone who had personal banks before still has them. The logic doesn’t really hold up.

Cause it’s not as simple as saying “Hey everyone, with the update of guild halls we’re deleting all guilds with only 1 member in them!” That’d kitten a ton of people off who store stuff in there. Additionally, locking everyone’s guild until they cleaned their guild bank out would have a similar reaction. The easiest way to handle it with little protest is to do what they did, make it more difficult going forward. It’s called grandfathering.

He’s right, you know.

Nobody necessarily LOST anything with this transformation, albeit there were a few setbacks because of the changed acquisition mechanics (our guild had to reacquire one or two middling upgrades).

The difference was, in a guild of 400 or so, it’s actually not that hard. Especially when you have a few “lifers” who crank out upgrades like they sleep, eat, and breathe the game.

But the rest of us? I used to have a personal guild just for the fun of having a guild (and so people would stop sending me invites for their guild). I barely got very far with it and yeah, it DID make a nice storehouse for the 10 or so things I’d kept in it back in the day before Experience Tomes / Scrolls were a thing and I had to hold onto claims tickets and scraps and a million other currency / key items that can’t be put into the wallet.

That was also before wallets were unified, so it let me mule items between my alts nice and easily. But, you know … a lot of what they did to make life easier and discourage a need for that kind of stuff turned moot once we needed ridiculous amounts of resources to upgrade thereafter.

Needless to say I no longer have a personal guild.

LouWolfskin.3492:

So, i have a small guild as well, most of the guildhall, we are currently at Level 34 i believe, was built with two people, one of which was me.

I will say that i find it sad that influence is gone but i actually enjoyed building the guildhall, it takes long, yes, but on the other hand, at least i, have a long time goal with this.
It will take me even longer to get my scribe anywhere, or the guildhall to max lvl at that, but in parts i want to say that is due to certain bottlenecks, like the fact that you gain way too little flax-seeds but need like 8K of them for a single lower level upgrade.

Again, in the long run i enjoy the building, but i get the frustration at the same time.
The system does favor larger guilds, not sure how this could be solved so that smaller guilds don’t feel like they fall behind because influence was easier to gain for larger guilds as well.

This is me, pretty much exactly. Two of my friends and I started a guild when we first got into GW2 shortly after launch, and since guild halls were introduced we’ve been very slowly building it up. One of them has since stopped playing, for the most part, so it’s just been myself and one other investing in the GH. We’re also up to level 34 now and just last week finished the big tavern upgrade that required 200 kegs.

It’s funny; a lot of the upgrades are ridiculously expensive for one or two players to try to complete on their own, but when you do try to tackle these upgrades and you do finally get it completed, the feeling of accomplishment is so much greater than what you might get from donating a few scraps of materials and a little gold here and there to a huge guild with hundreds of members. We truly feel as though the guild hall we’ve got is ours and ours alone, because honestly, it is! We’ve put so much time and effort into the GH and invested so much, not to mention the time spent decorating… needless to say, we’re proud of what we’ve done with so few contributions from others.

My point here is that even without influence, small guilds of only a handful of players can indeed claim a guild hall and deck it out. Yes, it will take a lot of time, and it will not be cheap, but it can be done. The “GH grind” does indeed become a bit disheartening at times when you look at what’s required of the next big upgrade (moar SW shovels, le sigh), but as you start to make headway you’ll get excited at the prospect of finally completing that big step. Or maybe that’s just me.

Regarding Guild Missions
The best advice I can give is to find a BIG, active guild with LOTS of members that schedules guild missions every week to ensure completion with their large membership base. There are a lot of big, friendly guilds which have no rep requirements and also don’t mind you piggybacking onto their guild missions while repping your own. You can complete a lot of PvE guild missions in this way (but not PvP nor WvW missions, unfortunately):

Follow the big guild’s squad around from map to map. You may need to join their squad to stay on the same map instance. As soon as the big guild starts a mission, immediately open your guild tab and launch the same mission. Make sure you are repping your guild, not the big guild, and once the mission is complete you should get credit as well. This works for guild bounty, guild race, and even guild puzzles (be sure to join the big guild’s puzzle instance, not your small guild’s instance)—once the mission completes, there is an NPC you can speak to that will give you an option to “end the mission early,” giving your small guild credit for completion too. This doesn’t work for most guild challenges that I’ve found, and more difficult missions like Hard Bounty simply aren’t feasible unless you have enough members of your small guild to be present for each of the bounty kills. But for many of the guild missions, you can actually complete these and get credit for your small guild even if you’re the only person in your guild.

Similarly, easy and medium guild treks are probably the simplest missions to do, and while 1 player can solo the easy trek, 2 players can do the medium trek if they’re quick enough and get lucky locations, while 3 players makes it a cake walk. Also, easy bounty is…well, stupidly easy. Trillia and Brekkabek can both be killed relatively easily with only two players.

But before you tag along on guild missions in the way I’ve described, you may want to ask someone in the big guild you’re following around if they’re okay with you leeching. Most will say it’s fine, because they understand that even though you aren’t repping them, they still get one additional player assisting them with mission completion (and that’s almost always a good thing), and you’re still participating in their guild’s weekly scheduled event, even if you are repping your personal guild. But just to be safe, check first.

Vampire.8654:

Basing my conclusions based off other things GW2 does, it does seem like they removed it to kill off personal guilds so people couldn’t use it as additional storage.

They have a 10 mail limit for mail from players so people can’t use it as additional storage.

They only have an option for take all in the auction house presumably for the same reason. It’s not difficult to add an option to take items individually, as other games do.

Personal guilds allowed for a lot of extra free storage, which goes against ANet’s goal, to get people to use the gem store to buy additional storage.

But we got to keep our storage, all 3 banks. Also our ranking and permission system.
Not only us, but anyone we invite can use it.

We just can’t make any other progress, and have no source of funding or the ability to create anything, including the banners we could create prior to HoT.

To my knowledge, you can still craft any of the banners you could before HoT— the difference now is that you need to have the guild hall to do so and you must have a scribe to craft the banners.

All upgrades related to those you had pre-HoT (ie, guild vault, guild banners, etc) were automatically “unlocked” for you when HoT hit. For those specific upgrades, you were grandfathered in.

From the wiki: “Guilds that were able to create Guild Magic Find Banners before the release of the Heart of Thorns expansion have this upgrade automatically unlocked for free.”

The same applies to other upgrades you had already unlocked.

I don’t miss influence for the reason i don’t have to ask people to rep all the time although I think I have enough of guild missions, I litterally can’t bear it anymore. When guild halls were announced and they said there was a quest to claim it with your entire guild i was under the impression that on a weekly basis we also had to defend the guild halls from mordrem invasion and that we could launch the invasion as a guild mission which would be more fun than the actual guild missions. Instead we have huge guild halls that are empty and deserted all the time and old guild missions that nobody in my guild care to do it any longer

But we got to keep our storage, all 3 banks. Also our ranking and permission system.
Not only us, but anyone we invite can use it.

We just can’t make any other progress, and have no source of funding or the ability to create anything, including the banners we could create prior to HoT.

Yes, because if they forced you to delete all your personal guilds, where would you store all the items contained inside? It’s called being grandfathered in.

Vampire.8654:

But we got to keep our storage, all 3 banks. Also our ranking and permission system.
Not only us, but anyone we invite can use it.

We just can’t make any other progress, and have no source of funding or the ability to create anything, including the banners we could create prior to HoT.

Yes, because if they forced you to delete all your personal guilds, where would you store all the items contained inside? It’s called being grandfathered in.

Which doesn’t change the answer. There are almost always, in MMOs more existing players than new ones. After the initial rush new players trickle in. Most people who were going to have a guild bank already had one when we were grandfathered in, so it was a pointless change to make just to put new people on an uneven footing. It makes no sense at all.

But making is so anyone can join multiple guilds without the pressure to get people to rep makes a lot of sense.

Vayne.8563:

Vampire.8654:

But we got to keep our storage, all 3 banks. Also our ranking and permission system.
Not only us, but anyone we invite can use it.

We just can’t make any other progress, and have no source of funding or the ability to create anything, including the banners we could create prior to HoT.

Yes, because if they forced you to delete all your personal guilds, where would you store all the items contained inside? It’s called being grandfathered in.

Which doesn’t change the answer. There are almost always, in MMOs more existing players than new ones. After the initial rush new players trickle in. Most people who were going to have a guild bank already had one when we were grandfathered in, so it was a pointless change to make just to put new people on an uneven footing. It makes no sense at all.

But making is so anyone can join multiple guilds without the pressure to get people to rep makes a lot of sense.

I’m not sure I understand your point here? You’re saying the only way they would have done it to encourage storage expansion purchases is by deleting all the personal guilds already in existence? That causes the issues I already described.

Additionally, even if newer players on trickle in, after expansions, some updates, etc new players do sign up. And the quote sometimes a little is better than nothing at all. Let’s say you sold magazine subscriptions. At first you had buy 1 get 1 free, and lots of people bought subscriptions initially. Some time in the future, you remove the buy 1 get 1 free part. Is it pointless selling subscriptions now because a majority of people already have one? You can still make money off the people who are still trickling in.

Additionally, timelines do apply. The removal of influence happened before GW2 went f2p. F2p most likely brought in a new source of players altogether.

As the leader of a large active guild, I do not miss the influence system at all. Yes, they took some steps backwards with HOT and their support for guilds has been lacking lately (no new guild missions in almost 4 years), but the one thing they did get right was the guild rep and contributions system with HOT. Contribution to a guild is now much more optional and proactive (with scribing and the event token vendor).

I agree with the topic. I miss Influence. I miss being able to slowly build my own personal guild up from scratch. I miss being able to build my own banners, boosts and guild bank, and drop them out for others.

Then I wanted to remake the guild because I wanted to change the name, around the time HoT came out, only to discover that I couldn’t get back any of that now, because it’s all gated behind a guild hall, and guild missions, neither of which I like to do.

Nilkemia.8507:

I agree with the topic. I miss Influence. I miss being able to slowly build my own personal guild up from scratch. I miss being able to build my own banners, boosts and guild bank, and drop them out for others.

Then I wanted to remake the guild because I wanted to change the name, around the time HoT came out, only to discover that I couldn’t get back any of that now, because it’s all gated behind a guild hall, and guild missions, neither of which I like to do.

But isn’t the point of a guild to do stuff with others?

LouWolfskin.3492:

But isn’t the point of a guild to do stuff with others?

For you and many others perhaps. For me, I liked being able to build up my own thing. And, the Influence system let people do stuff with others, or let them go it on their own if they wanted. You had a choice. Now, you don’t. The system in place only works fine for big guilds, most of which were probably already established before this change.

Nilkemia.8507:

LouWolfskin.3492:

But isn’t the point of a guild to do stuff with others?

For you and many others perhaps. For me, I liked being able to build up my own thing. And, the Influence system let people do stuff with others, or let them go it on their own if they wanted. You had a choice. Now, you don’t. The system in place only works fine for big guilds, most of which were probably already established before this change.

It sure was nice to have that choice!

It was also nice to be able to log in and accomplish something useful for the guild, even if no one else was around. That was a big part of what made guilds great in Star Wars Galaxies – you could help each other out in many ways without having to sync up your real life schedules. The effect was less so in GW2, but at least you knew you could log in, “do your own thing” for a while, and still help out your friends, even if you didn’t happen to see them that day.

Vampire.8654:

Vayne.8563:

Vampire.8654:

But we got to keep our storage, all 3 banks. Also our ranking and permission system.
Not only us, but anyone we invite can use it.

We just can’t make any other progress, and have no source of funding or the ability to create anything, including the banners we could create prior to HoT.

Yes, because if they forced you to delete all your personal guilds, where would you store all the items contained inside? It’s called being grandfathered in.

Which doesn’t change the answer. There are almost always, in MMOs more existing players than new ones. After the initial rush new players trickle in. Most people who were going to have a guild bank already had one when we were grandfathered in, so it was a pointless change to make just to put new people on an uneven footing. It makes no sense at all.

But making is so anyone can join multiple guilds without the pressure to get people to rep makes a lot of sense.

I’m not sure I understand your point here? You’re saying the only way they would have done it to encourage storage expansion purchases is by deleting all the personal guilds already in existence? That causes the issues I already described.

Additionally, even if newer players on trickle in, after expansions, some updates, etc new players do sign up. And the quote sometimes a little is better than nothing at all. Let’s say you sold magazine subscriptions. At first you had buy 1 get 1 free, and lots of people bought subscriptions initially. Some time in the future, you remove the buy 1 get 1 free part. Is it pointless selling subscriptions now because a majority of people already have one? You can still make money off the people who are still trickling in.

Additionally, timelines do apply. The removal of influence happened before GW2 went f2p. F2p most likely brought in a new source of players altogether.

Most new players trickle in. Most people who trickle in aren’t going to stay anyway. Most of the “damage” you describe has already been done.

Do you know the percentage of players that stay long enough in an MMO to level something like a personal guild bank in the first place?

They could have easily just changed what was needed to make one if they just wanted to make that harder. It would have saved time and energy.

But they didn’t just do that. They introduced an entirely new system. Introducing an entirely new system for the tiny percentage of new accounts that would both log in and get that far into the game and keep playing it doesn’t sound like a good use of resources.

On the other hand, they’ve had complaints about guild repping and people arguing about it since launch. The changes affect those people. Why do you think your theory is more likely than mine?

Tatwi.3562:

Nilkemia.8507:

LouWolfskin.3492:

But isn’t the point of a guild to do stuff with others?

For you and many others perhaps. For me, I liked being able to build up my own thing. And, the Influence system let people do stuff with others, or let them go it on their own if they wanted. You had a choice. Now, you don’t. The system in place only works fine for big guilds, most of which were probably already established before this change.

It sure was nice to have that choice!

It was also nice to be able to log in and accomplish something useful for the guild, even if no one else was around. That was a big part of what made guilds great in Star Wars Galaxies – you could help each other out in many ways without having to sync up your real life schedules. The effect was less so in GW2, but at least you knew you could log in, “do your own thing” for a while, and still help out your friends, even if you didn’t happen to see them that day.

As we were building my guild hall I was able to log in solo when no one was around and do stuff for the guild hall.

The guild needed mats I could farm and farm them I did.

I believe that the change from passive influence was a cynical move from Anet. They have turned what was a player friendly system into a massive gold sink. Many guilds had already amassed a large amount of influence but that was marginalized by the new system.

The new system makes it so that you either have to part with the meager loot you receive or be lucky enough to be on when your guild does missions to help out the guild.

HoT = farming You can’t just play the way you want to help the guild. Well, you can but it probably won’t be nearly as helpful as direct farming. HoT guild system turns fun into work…. That is if you are interested in progressing your guild hall level.

Most new players trickle in. Most people who trickle in aren’t going to stay anyway. Most of the “damage” you describe has already been done.

Do you know the percentage of players that stay long enough in an MMO to level something like a personal guild bank in the first place?

A decent percentage most likely due to the fact that it was fairly easy, and the average player who trickles in isn’t just playing for a few days and quitting. Especially when they purchased the game, back when GW2 was only p2p.

They could have easily just changed what was needed to make one if they just wanted to make that harder. It would have saved time and energy.

But they didn’t just do that. They introduced an entirely new system. Introducing an entirely new system for the tiny percentage of new accounts that would both log in and get that far into the game and keep playing it doesn’t sound like a good use of resources.

I agree, which is why they introduced it to give the old players new content, entice new players to join, while being able to justify the removal of (any new*) personal guilds for storage.

*since you love to harp on that one

On the other hand, they’ve had complaints about guild repping and people arguing about it since launch. The changes affect those people. Why do you think your theory is more likely than mine?

Because

They introduced an entirely new system. Introducing an entirely new system for the tiny

feature

that

could have been accomplished with a feature change

doesn’t sound like a good use of resources.

Additionally, my theory affects their bottom line, which is what investors love.

And before you say “Nu uh, Anet is a private company”, NCSoft is on the stock market and is the publisher.

Addendum: Also the other things I outlined in my first post that GW2 did to discourage additional storage space.