Breaking News

I'll make up a totally fresh article once the dust settles, with a link to this one for posterity.

As you read this, be aware that some details may change a bit before these are released, and that not everything will be available at release. (There was brief mention of a Phase 2 for some features, for example.) The information was also coming at a pretty rapid pace, and my notes had to be sketchy in order to keep up.

That having been said, this information is hot off the presses, and there's enough in here of interest to crafters that I felt I should put something up now, instead of waiting the few days it will take to get then to send me art resources and the like.

The Basics

• Tier 1: Level 30+ guild. Halls are available in every city, and use the current 5-room house model. Purchase price will be 100 plat.
• Tier 2: Level 50+ guild. Halls are in North Freeport near Stonestair Byway, and in South Qeynos in the Hall of Thunder. They will be 10-room halls, and will have a 500 plat price tag.
• Tier 3: Level 70+ guild. Halls are in Antonica and Commonlands, accessible via bells at the docks. They're absolutely ginormous, with a huge courtyad, a docks area where bells can be placed, etc., etc. Purchase price is 1,000 plat.

Purchasing and Upkeep

There will be weekly upkeep costs for the guildhall amounting to 1% of the purchase price, plus status. Using the same sort of interface as player homes, guildmembers can donate money and personal guildstatus to the hall's escrow, to be put towards maintenance and Amenities (more on amenities in a bit). As with personal home escrow, once money and status is placed into escrow, it cannot be withdrawn.

Moving to a new guild hall, such as moving from a Tier 1 to a Tier 2 guildhall works mostly the same as with player homes - go to the new place, click to buy, it says you already have one, and do you REALLY want to move? If yes, then it packs up the furniture into a moving crate, transfers the escrow, and fun stuff like that. (See the Amenities information on important info about Amenities and moving.)

Access

Amenities

Once amenities are purchased, they can be moved around the hall by folks with Friend or higher access, but they cannot be picked up and placed in inventory. They can be removed from the hall from the amenity purchase panel.

There will be 42 different amenities available at launch of guildhalls. A level 30 guild can have 15 of these amenities in their hall at any given time. A level 80 guild will be able to have up 30 amenities.

Every amenity will have a coin and status cost, and a weekly upkeep cost, except for the courtyard statues. The statues are just meant to be massive and impressive, and will cast coin and status to purchase, but have no upkeep.

So, just what are these amenities, and why would you want to spend on them? They are various items or NPCs that will make your guild's life easier.

Various things that were covered were mariner bells for various locations, a druid portal NPC, banker, broker, mender, portals, guild strategist, crafting equipment, fuel merchant, guild strategist, harvesting storage depot, creature conjuror, a harvesting NPC and much, much more.

Please, watch the saliva, folks. It is bad for your keyboards! Let me cover some of these in a bit more detail before I rush to another panel.

There will be a world broker. Eventually, they hope to also have a special guild broker where you can sell items that only your guildmates can access and purchase. (This is phenomenal for guild crafters who want to have items for guildmates available at-cost, or at a cheaper rate than they'd sell it to strangers, etc.)

There will be a harvesting depot, where you can drop off harvesting resources for other guildmates to access. (A guildmate of mine has much fun mailbombing me with a ton of surplus raws, which I often then bounce around to other guildies in need, so one of these will be divine for us!)

The mender can be set to take the full cost of mending from the player, or partially pay for it, and part come from the escrow.

The "guild strategist" will allow a player to purchase flags that can then be planted in any non-instanced location. The rest of the guild can then use the strategist to travel from the guild hall to that location. The flags will stay planted for 2 hours, and only one can be planted by the guild at a time. This is a great way to prep for something big, but the purchase price of the amenity is also going to be pretty big. :)

The creature conjuror will allow you to summon various arena champions for you to practice fighting with them.

The harvesting NPCs will be of a specific type (miner, gatherer, etc.), and you can tell them to go out and harvest for a certain tier of resources. In a couple hours, you can then check back in with him and get the results of 100 random pulls from the proper node type.

Since the Tier 3 guild hall is so amazingly huge, there will also be a portal amenity that will allow you to buy and place 5 portals in various spots in the hall, for faster travel between them.

You will be able to customize the various hirelings (NPCs) to set name, race, and gender. You will also be able to purchase a uniform amenity if you wish, so that you can dress them in matching uniforms if you wish.

What About Player Furniture?

Any furniture item placed in the guild hall is likely to then become the property of the guild, so if you don't have trustee access, you may not be able to get the item back.

The rent status reduction on player housing items will NOT reduce the upkeep costs on the hall and the amenities. It would just be too unbalancing, with the 1500 item limit and so on. They may look into some other ways to reduce in Phase 2 - time will tell.

Setting the Stage - the Next GU

What Next?

I'm one VERY exhausted halfling, but hopefully this will get you a bit of information on the halls until more formal writeups can be done and art assets obtained.

Added Notes:

During the "Anything Goes" panel yesterday, we were taken on another tour of guildhalls, including our first views of the tier 2 guild halls. While the T3 halls are outright ginormous, the T2 ten-room halls are pretty doggone big, too! I can't wait until we have access to screenshots and/or tour videos, as they looked pretty sweet!

There was also mention at this point, that only the T2 and T3 halls were part of the original development plan, but that they added in the T1 homes as an extra "bonus" that would allow lower-level guilds access to something.

Updated Details

Since our unveiling of Guild Halls at Fan Faire we've heard lots of feedback, over 60 pages worth! This morning we discussed a lot of this feedback and have decided to make some changes.

1. Zone Art

2. Pricing

Tier 1
Purchase: 50p (Lowered from 100p)
Upkeep: 50g, 50k status (Lowered from 1p, 100k status)

Tier 2
Purchase: 250p (Lowered from 500p)
Upkeep: 2.5p, 100k status (Lowered from 5p, 150k status)

Tier 3
Purchase: 1,000p
Upkeep: 10p, 200k status

3. Accessibility

4. Tradeskill Tables

We hope that these changes will have a positive impact and resolve some of the concerns expressed so far. Smaller guilds should have a much easier time getting into a Tier 1 guild hall and now have an easier upgrade path moving into the Tier 2. The amount of upkeep required to maintain a guild hall still greatly depends on the choice of amenities you decide to purchase.