Guild Hall Update

Boy what a hot topic on the EQ2 forums. I give kudos to SOE for a quick response on this one. Here's the latest:

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

One of the issues that concerned you was that the Tier 1 guild hall made use of the existing 5-room house. Initially this was added to give us another tier that originally wasn't in the plan. However, we can certainly understand that the effort and cost involved in obtaining your first guild hall is significant, especially for smaller guilds. Tim "Haohmaru" Heydelaar, our zone art lead, made a huge commitment to guild halls this morning and agreed to building a new 5-room guild hall using the brand new zone geometry and textures that are used in the larger guild halls. He will also be making changes to the Tier 2 guild halls, adding a new atrium and expanding their size slightly over what we showed you at Fan Faire. The Tier 1 and 2 guild halls will still be located inside the city. If you're concerned about travel, see #3 below.

2. Pricing

For some of the smaller guilds the pricing of entry-level guild halls was a barrier. We've decided to leave the pricing of the Tier 3 guild halls alone, but have lowered the price of the Tier 1 and 2 guild hall. Below is the new pricing table.

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

Many people were concerned that guild halls located in other cities would not be very accessible. You will have several methods to get to your guild hall very easily, regardless of its location. First, you'll be able to purchase a house item from the city status merchant that will allow you to port from your personal house straight to your guild hall. Secondly, we've reduced the cost of the "Call to Guild Hall" amenity greatly. It will now only cost 1p, 250k status to purchase instead of 10p, 2 million status. In addition we've lowered the recast timer on Call to Guild Hall so you can use it every 15 minutes instead of once per hour.

4. Tradeskill Tables

Another concern was having to purchase amenities for each tradeskill table when you already have them available in your personal home. This made it difficult for small guilds because they'd have to use most of their amenity slots for tradeskill devices. We've decided to allow you to place your existing tradeskill tables in the guild hall and have removed them from the amenity list. Now smaller guilds will be able to use those slots for new features like the supply depot and harvester or convenience features like the fuel merchant and writ giver. Keep in mind that this removes 7 amenities so the original count of 40+ amenities at launch is now around 35.

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.

Still a bit pricey for T2 halls but closer to being manageable for us. The T3 will be something to work towards. Can't wait to see the redone T2 version and new atrium. Yay!