Guild Wars 2

In GW1, guild halls were one of my favorite features of the game. I loved the convenience, as well as the privacy. I liked being able to hit “g” and have all of the merchants at my fingertips. I liked hanging out with friends in the hall and just talking sometimes. I would really like to see this transfer over to GW2, which is why I am glad to see the discussion shift towards instanced guild halls.

As far as accessibility goes, I think anyone who plays GW2 and is in a guild of any size should be able to “unlock” a guild hall. Since there has been a lot of discussion around how to unlock it and how to accommodate for a larger guild while not punishing a small guild here is my suggestion:

Make guild halls purchasable with gold. It’s used for basically everything else, so why not guild halls? But here is the twist, increase the cost based on the instance size the guild wants to purchase. On top of this, make part of the cost also based on the number of people inside the guild. Say a guild of 1 person is limited to only purchasing an instance (guild hall), that holds up to 10 people, BUT as the guild grows this can be upgraded upon with more gold. Whatever the maximum instance size is (and consequently guild hall) could be purchasable by your large guilds with 100, 200, 300+ members. This would allow every guild of every size guild accessibility straight from the start. Everyone can contribute to the purchase of the guild hall.

Once you have a guild, merchants and crafting stations could be available through gold unlocks, similar to Guild Wars 1. These merchants are a flat, reasonable rate for any size guild (same as GW1). I understand that GW2 wants to have a strong community, but people should not be forced to go to LA or whatever other big city if they just want to make a quick stop in at the GH to craft a few sharpening stones. If you want tight community in large cities like that, then add more real content to those cities that encourages people to go there! Chances are if I’m making a quick LA stop for a merch or crafting station, I’m not talking to anyone in map chat anyways. As far as a system for fully customizing guild halls, I don’t really have a good idea on what that could be yet, but some of the other suggestions have been alright (blue prints/crafting/etc). Just make it scale to the size of the purchased guild hall, and as the guild hall gets larger it could inherently become more impressive (More members = more achievements? just an idea).

I do also like the idea of keeping GvG in mind (if this will be introduced in the future) while considering the development of guild halls, which is why I think guild halls themselves should be strictly cosmetic (no strategic GVG advantage to having a guild hall with tons of upgrades and stuff like that) BUT have a separate choice for maybe a fortress or something (similar to your choices in GW1 for guild halls). Maybe the entrance to the actual guild hall could be the only thing used in an actual guild battle, and would house the guild lord, while keeping everything else about the guild hall cosmetic.

Another point (if anyone made it this far), is that guilds are all about the members. I love the idea of being able to showcase accomplishments based on members. Maybe if members unlock legendaries, these can go on display in the guild hall, or if certain titles are unlocked, a statue goes on display similar to the hall of monuments. Achieving certain milestones as a guild together could also result in special banners and other cosmetic things in the guild to kind of show it off. The larger and more active the guild, the easier the grandest and impressive cosmetic upgrades could be achieved. Basically, a system that rewards individual activity as well as guild activity so that small guilds aren’t left out (if a group of 5-10 members are extremely active and have accomplished a lot of cool achievements then they would be awarded for this, but as the guild hall instance gets larger the more impressive the cosmetics could be).

The last thing I just wanted to support was the idea of a central “hub” zone for alliances. Since alliances come and go, I like idea of a central area that anyone from any of the guild halls (guilds) associated with the alliance could port into to meet up with the group. I have also seen the idea of utilizing alliances to help build up smaller guilds, or “share” benefits. Maybe it could be an option for the large guild to actually use some of their “influence” (or whatever the cost of upgrades might end up being), to directly help the smaller guild. This way if the alliance splits, everyone keeps what they earned and no one was forced to give anything to other guilds.

That’s all I have for now, and sorry if I ended up repeating a bunch of stuff that was said already, but I’m really excited to see where this discussion goes!