Guild Hall Preview from Fan Faire up at EQ2TC!

The reason that people are talking about having the island location is because it is a NEUTRAL site. No having to avoid guards and getting killed to get to it. All the guild halls, not matter the tier should be in neutral locations with easy access. It is NOT for the courtyards, etc.
The part about having rental on the guild hall and amenities.....that it's a sense of purpose for a guild is wrong...the since of purpose is leveling the guild...which is what people have been doing all along. The guild hall is the place to show off that work for your fellow guildies to enjoy. The only people who are going to quit having a sense of purpose are the level 80 guilds becasue they will have done it all. All the small guilds are asking for is a PLACE....a SMALL place, that's affordable and easy to get to and maintain.
I guess one of reasons people are upset, is after all these years the ONLY work SOE did on guilds halls was 4 designs. All these years and only 4 designs for 2 levels of guild halls? An now there isn't enough time to make other designs....well I could wait till November for one that was reasonable.
And the fact that furniture and decor will not reduce status is just wrong, too.

Rothgar wrote:

This response surprises me. No level 70 guild has just started and expects something for nothing. They've worked their collective tails off and deserve something significant for it. I was under the impression that that something significant would be Guild Halls, and after waiting for years (literally) for them, it's disappointing to hear that not only are they going to be hugely expensive to purchase, they're going to be painful to maintain.
My guild is lvl 77, has been around virtually unchanged since the day of launch, and maintains a roster of about 100 or so accounts. I see no way we could hope to keep up with 10p and 200k status each week while maintaining the atmosphere we've treasured throughout our life in EQ2. The 1000p purchase price is achievable, but is only so because it's a goal, rather than a repetitive sink. Upkeep costs become tedious and tiresome, and turn what should be leisure time into work, as has been said so many times before in this thread.
That's the biggest sticking point for me and my guild. The guild cloaks were fun because we saved and reached a goal, and weren't punished for it afterward with crushing, repetitive costs. Please rethink this.

I'm pretty much a nobody - officer in a level 54 guild. We rarely raid, but come together quite a bit for grouping.
I personally love the new guilds. I think the cost/upkeep setup is perfect. We'll most definately be getting the T2 guildhall, while the T3 will be out of reach unless we decide to grow significantly. I have no problem with this at all.
I would have liked to have the T1 & T2 guildhalls more accessable/advantageous to members of opposing factions, as most guilds now are made up of people from both cities. However, I won't complain about this, as we still don't know the mechanics of the two lower guild halls - they may be perfectly safe for members from other cities to access and move in/out of.
I'd also like to say I think SOE has done an excellent job with the amenities - I'm looking forward to trying several of them out.
I have very few posts on the forums, and this thread is a great example of why I rarely come here. I love the game, but so many people here just complain so vehemently that it puts me in a bad mood just reading it.
My congratulations to Rothgar and all the others who worked on this - well done!

Ok guess I really asking for it when I say that I think it's great that there is a big cost for both purchasing as well as maintain the guild halls.
I personally feel that the coolest guild halls should be very limited. I could even agree that it should only be a fixed numbers of them on each server. Let the guild halls be that show off that I believe they where supposed to be. I think It would be cool if there where just like 3 of the coolest guildhalls and they where in public with the guilds colours decorating the entrance. And let it cost huge amounts to keep it make ppl sweet to keep them.
I think that there always should be things to strive for and that cooperation should be rewarded. That every little 2 account level 20 guild should be able to buy the biggest and coolest guildhall in the game would be very disappointing. As would if that a dead guild with a few members should be able to upkeep one.
Let the guild halls be a mirror of the current power of the guild. A active powerful guild will not have much problems to get 10 plat a week or the status points. So let them show off some. Why even have guilds with less than 10 accounts. Oh yes for personal gain and the extra bank slots. But I doubt that the idea with Guilds where to have one persons ones.
The only disappointing to me is that it seems we don't have to do anything really to get the hall. Just pay and the hall are yours. I where looking forward for a Massive Guild activity where we would be forced to make every single person in the guild work their little buts off to gain us the status or items or what ever to get the new halls.... But sadly it was just some plat.
And 10 plat a week for a active guild ... bah if one can not get 10 plat in a whole guild that guild should not have a hall that size in the first place.
(I personally see no benefit in the halls tbh and the huge one will just make me get lost but sure we get one to show off since that's what the game is all about anyway )
/Hugs Tash

Ok, well so far my biggest feedback is sony - you need to come up with a magical 'find all informative/constructive' posts button for forum use ;-)

I read a lot of the posts, not all of them as I just don't have that kind of time on my hands. I have had a think, discussed a few points with my guildies and so far ...

I think the SOE guys have done an amazing job. While just about all of the ideas in previous guild hall threads were great, I really didn't think that much aside from the usual broker, banker, mender, vendor would be added. I was pleasantly suprised to see these fabulous amenities that some of us were really only dreaming about. A big thumbs up from me there for all who were involved in the creation of these.

The artwork shown in those youtube video's also looked fabulous ... and talk about HUGE guild halls. Looks like I can still find a corner to hide myself away in afterall. The colour in the vids was kind of lacking so I am going to assume it will be as good as Kunark and the style seemed elegant and not over-the-top. The past expansions have revealled that the SOE team discovered colour some time after the initial release of grey, greyish, and greyer so I have high hopes for beauty in all things now!

I am not suprised that the biggest bone of contention here is the price. Even in our guild where that cost is attainable, it still means that the same old people end up throwing in the larger chunks of the cost. However, this is meant to be a HUGE purchase/money sink/goal and I do think it achieves that without it being completely insane. While it seems like a huge cost at the moment, that is partly because it is going to be new and shiny and everyone wants it. If a new guild starts up 6 months from now, is the goal of hitting lvl 50 with 500p or 70 with 1000p really too much to ask? People have been spending that to get their epic lately, at least this purchase is for the whole guild. Perhaps the price does need to be reviewed and lowered a little ... but I think that people really need to consider this is meant to be a long term goal for the guild, and priced high accordingly.

The status also seems pretty fair to me, there aren't as many people hitting the roof over that so I figure thats a big plus ;-)

I am dissapointed that the lvl50 guild hall will be within freeport or qeynos - quite a lot of guilds these days are mixed alignment (including our own). Possibly with the 'call-to-hall' or whatever it will be this can get around that particular problem though? Especially if you have your own portal NPC or mariner bells, so I won't go jumping up and down about it right now.

The furniture not counting towards the status cost is a bit of a blow, but a very minor one imo. Possibly this makes room for specialty items from world events, specialty quests, or factions that are guild hall cost reducing? That would be a super nice touch. The item count has made a lot of us furniture lovers go 'ouch' but anyone who owns or visits the large houses now (like Bayle Court) KNOWS what it can be like to load ... I am assuming that the same goes for this guild hall and that the item limit is there for this reason alone.

As to all the smaller guilds ... I do know what it is like to be part of a smaller guild! For quite some time ours consisted of only 2-3 members. Even now that we are bigger (although probably still a small guild in most peoples mind) there are not that many more that really do contribute as much as we do on a day-to-day basis. As a smaller guild you miss out on things and you do have to work super hard to get some of the others. That is a fact of life, or at least a fact of everquest life and if you are a small guild you better get used to it Getting to lvl 30 is not really that hard, getting to lvl 50 is tough but do-able even for the 2 man guilds out there. I repeat, this is not meant to be an insta-get, but rather a long term goal.

I will also mention here that there has been a lot done (in my opinion) to encourage people to join existing guilds and discourage them from starting up their own. And I must say that I agree, there are way too many guilds started for no real reason and something needs to be done. This might actually be a good thing! It will be tough on the family, friends and couple guilds out there and I have no qualms at all with them. Unfortunately it is just going to be tougher and that is how it is ... however even for those guilds I believe the lvl50 hall is attainable with time and effort.

So, all up I have to say well done to SOE. Looks like you might have to review the plat cost but apart from that things seem to be coming along fabulously well

Thundy wrote:

Holy price gouging Batman!

We're all stirred up over how much a guild hall costs or how much it will take for upkeep - has anyone paid much attention to this list?

Assuming small guilds can scrape together enough to get themselves a hall - it's likly to be very empty for a very long time at these costs. I'm totally bewildered - honest.

My guild is on the 100 richest on AB list at last check and I can tell you without a doubt - that unless a member or two has a stash of cash I don't know about (and we're a very close guild, so I doubt it) then I'm very unclear how the rest of the guilds that are not on the list have any hope of adding enough amenities to make a hall worth its salt. Again, if your a guild with a lot of members or a raiding guild with cash resources, chances are this is easy cheesy - probably gives you something to do with your coin. But if your a small guild with just enough plat to buy your adept III's......

I did a quick calculation

Subject: T1 basic hall, basic amenities (that I consider "must haves" to make a hall worth it and useable by guild members that are of the opposite city faction from the city the hall is in):

- Broker
- Banker
- Crafting tables (lets assume at least 4 tables)
- Fuel Merchant (no cost listed, but lets assume is at least the same as the bartender)
- Portals


Total initial Amenity cost: 95 Plat and 15,000,000 million status.

Total hall set-up cost: 195 plat, 15,000,000 million status (granted you can buy amenities one at a time, but ultimately, this is what it will cost you)

Now...about that upkeep (I'm assuming upkeep for amenities is weekly as it is for the halls)

Total weekly upkeep for T1 hall and above listed amenities: 2plat 62 gold and 175,000 status per week

OR: 10 plat 48 gold and 700,000 status per month

OR: 125 plat 76 gold and 8,400,000 status per year.

Now for the disclaimers.....

*Not all amenities were listed. In some cases the upkeep costs were not known. I used "bartender" for the fuel merchant numbers and tried to use comparable numbers for amenities where specific information was missing. For example, since "World broker" and "Banker" had the same purchese costs, I surmised that the banker may also have the same upkeep costs. Portal hireling had no upkeep numbers, so I used "translocation beacon" upkeep numbers since they both sound like some sort to portal device. Its almost 1 am. I'm very tired. I might have made a mistake.


Food for thought...........

Too much QQ'ing not enough farming.

Get to work and save your plat, you got a few months..

Pitt Hammerfist wrote:

people like you make those of us attempting to have a real discussion on threads wish for a USB device that allows other people to beat you thru the internet

with that said

the upfront costs arent a problem, THEY are a goal.

the UPKEEP on everything is the problem, it turns the game into a second job for those of us who arent in "we can field multiple raid forces" guilds

after reading about 35 pages now of this thread, i can honestly say that is where the overwhelming majority of players posting here, and even the ones you see in level chat on whatever server really have a problem with

the upfront costs can all be gotten, and heck, you can even raise those costs if you remove the upkeep, do it this way

add the ability to pool status points guild wide, you have the guild bank, and a spot for status points, and let everyone contribute make it so that ranks allowed to use it can be set, and theres no problem

then, you can add an upfront status cost to everything, no problem

i mean, you have an escrow account that pools the status AFTER the purchase, add the ability to do it BEFORE

oh, and raise the level 70 guildhall price to 5k (ONLY if you delete the upkeep)

I'm in a small 6 man level 28 guild and only 2 of us play regularly(every day). Just between the 2 of us we can afford a tier 1 Guild Hall. We just have to get to 30, which will definitely happen before the Guild Halls are implemented. For me and the people I play with, the initial price or upkeep is not really an issue
(I can't believe I just said that ). We would just like to see some other graphic for the 5 room hou...err...Guild Hall.

Rothgar wrote:

hate to tell ya man, one of my current biotches with the instances is for example im currently at 23 chelsith runs, and literally the only non treasured(wooden) chest ive seen is the one with the Frog Legs of the Blue Baron in it(its an ornate)

we got two masters the other day in Maidens, that was run like, 40 or so, everything else is nodrop ornate crap

i have seen ONE Exquisite chest in COA so far(probably 25 runs or so) it had the CarotidCutter in it(i already have my fabled zerker disappoint, er, epic)

and so far, VoES only has Ornate chests to drop

oh, no one in my guild raids, so ive been to RE2 exactly 4 times, finished it twice

where am i gonna get masters?

oh, and these get rich quick schemes? would someone tell me one of em? at least on Befallen, ive made 200p in 4 years of playing(thats broker sales by the way) and have barely over 100p to my name

level 55 nearly 56 guild, little over 1 million status contributed to the guild myself(10 million personal) and we have i think 7 seperate accounts

MindParadox wrote:

It's pretty simple really, If you can't afford it you can do without it, guild halls are not a necessity they are a luxury.

Sphiriah wrote:

After thumbing threw countless replies to this thread...
...it is best summed up by Sphiriah.

Pitt Hammerfist wrote:

where did i say guildhalls are a necessity? please, point that out

right, you cant

in fact, i see where i said RAISE the prices, because the UPFRONT costs are GOALS


ONE TIME doing something= Goal

FOREVER DOING THE SAME THING= work

EQ2=Game

Game DOES NOT EQUAL work

the upfront cost isnt a problem, that is easily obtainable, if not now, in the future

the weekly upkeep costs, when factored in along with the guild hall, say you only get what would eventually become probably the most popular 5

are for a non raiding guild with less than 20 accounts active, simply unreasonable

unless only large(24-40+ accounts) raiding guilds should have anything but the Tier 1 halls?


** Edited because clearly we don't comprehend that when Kiara says stop being snide and rude, she actually means it thank you and have a good day!! -- Kiara

I've been wondering lately if the Crowd in DAoC also complained for the Upkeep at first,
because no one was complaining when i joined, 5 years ago till i left, ~4 years ago (guess for what).
Regards, theriatis.

A lot to read through in this thread.
One thing I'm curious about is:
Since carpenter-crafted furniture and other status-reducing house items will not count toward a guild hall upkeep, I would like to know if, or when, further details can be given on reducing the upkeep cost - for the building itself or the amenities, or both.
I would think this will go a long way on maintaining the upkeep costs.

Kendricke wrote:

Sorry couldn't help it.

I've a few points to deal with, so please bear with me. First up, cost.

Having the initial cost for a guild hall be high is fine. It should be high - something the guild as a whole has to work towards.

Having the initial cost for amenities be pricey is, if not fine, at least understandable.

These are goals. A guild can work towards them. Smaller guilds will take longer, larger ones accomplish it faster, but they can be obtained.

The maintenance costs, on the other hand... for the hall itself it's a hell of a pinch, but not without precident - everyone pays maintenance on their character houses, after all. I don't like it, and I think they're way too high, but I hope at least a compromise can be reached.

But maintenance costs on amenities?!

My guild does not pay a maintenance cost to keep our heraldry. I do not pay maintenance costs to keep the tradeskill stations I've purchased (more on those in a minute). Mounts, boxes, both convenience items which players buy once and use however long they wish without additional cost. Why are we paying maintenance costs on things we are buying for our guild to use? A per-use cost I could maybe see for some of them - the harvesters, for example. 5c to harvest a T1 zone, maybe 3-5g to harvest T7-8, paid by the person placing the harvest order. Intra-guild broker charges a 5% markup, the world broker 25%. A convenience charge per use makes more sense than nickle and diming our guilds to death. Especially when we're not talking nickles and dimes but gold and plat. Those fees add up way, way too fast.

And some of these ameniities are downright rude, specifically the crafting stations. We have perfectly serviceable crafting stations players can already purchase with status and coin. My guild specifically pooled to buy crafting stations to have if/when guild halls became available. And now we're told our pre-planning was a waste of time and coin, and to be able to set up a crafting area in our guild hall we'll have to purchase different crafting stations. Which we then have to continue paying for each week. The amenity is already available in-game, stop reinventing the wheel and let us use it.

T1 guild hall - nice try, but unfortunately a huge miss here. 100p to buy, 1p/w maintenance, for the housing which is already available in-game plus some amenities (which, again, we get charged through the nose for on a weekly basis). At that price, my guild could have an officer buy a 5-room house in each city, equip each house with a full set of crafting stations, toss a couple mailboxes and bulletin boards in so that each station is convenient to both, decorate each house, and make do with the city amenities like broker and banker which are now available in every city zone anyway; essecially giving us 5 guild halls. Honestly, we've got that structure for two "guild" houses now - one in Qeynos and one in Gorowyn (not a full set of crafting stations here yet). Most of the additional amenities are not worth the additional maintenance cost, and none of them are worth the 100p downpayment to get what we already have. If you're going to have T1 guild halls available in each city as current 5-room houses, might as well make it that the leader of a lvl 30 guild can buy the amenities without a guild hall after paying a 1-time access fee - which should be a lot less than 100p.

And finally, access. As someone else stated, this is why we want guild halls on the island (and please get rid of the lvl 70 guards on the docks at the same time). Otherwise half our guild, and I'm guessing most others, has to risk their lives to make it to a guild gathering. Alternately, once the guild leader buys a guild hall, give all members of that guild an instant +50k faction with the city the hall is in, so that those who are normally KoS there will have 0 faction and not have their heads chopped off by a wandering epic guard. Surely Antonia and Lucan are both well aware by now that many of the guilds which support their cities have members who can't walk safely through their streets? Or, as another option, finally admit that the good/evil factions are meaningless on non-PvP servers and either dump city factions or allow us to earn faction with cities we're not citizens of.

Think that covers it for me.

Vortexelemental@The Bazaar wrote:

I have visted VoES twice, Chartok once and that zone in Sebilus once, that is IT and I have about 80p right now... so know you don't need to go do intances.

A simple list, with the rant afterwards.

• The cost of the crafting stations is out of line. Unless they do something special and spiffy, and even if they do, let us just take our elaborate ones from our fauxhalls.
• the cost of the rent is too high.
• the cost of the amenities - some are worth it. some are not. Most would only be really worth it for a big raiding guild.
• Way to insult the carpenters and make their items, once more, worth less to the guilds in general. No status reduction?

Bravo, we can feel the love.

My guild is not a raiding guild. We have probably ten regular players and we are a casual tradeskilling guild. Still, with hard work by the probably 6 people who actually grind the writs and do the quests, as well as the contributions of those who are just flat out more busy in RL than those of us who have the time to work on this stuff, we passed the LVL 50 hurdle and are aiming at 60 even now. It is a goal that keeps us moving forward, like getting everyone their master crafter status.

We could work towards the prices of the initial costs of the halls.We are dismayed but grimly determined.

Then we saw the upkeep.
The upkeep is a slap in the face to anyone who is not in a 50 active member guild with lvl 80s throughout. it isn't even the rent so much as the wretched 'upkeep' on the tradeskill stations and other items - that is an insult. We *bought* those for our Faux guildhalls. Twice. Once for the goodies and once for the evils. The fact that no status or rent reduction is mentioned, anywhere, makes me pretty sure that we're just not going to be able to justify putting our funds into this. We already have five room houses with trade stations upon which we do not have to pay additional rent. What next, you going to have us have to pay status rent to *not* play the stupid card game?
Once again, this is a case of people saying 'you aren't good enough because you don't take EQ seriously.'
Uh... hello? its a GAME!!! Of course we don't take it seriously! This is not a frellin' competitive sport! We are not in competition with anyone go get a guild hall - there are not a limited number of them. I would be perfectly happy with the first or second one, which costwise would be doable if not for the continuing cost after the fact. That is a grind and that is one of the reasons i *leave* games, not look forward to logging on. We have rent to pay in RL - this is not something i want to have to worry about in a freaking game!
Now we're being told if we do not commit insane amounts of time and effort grinding status and money, we will not be able to get a sniff of the latest thing that rewards huge guilds and makes small ones once more feel not only left out, but snubbed and sniggered at by the Devs, who I'm sure actually just don't even think about us.
At all.

So everyone seems to be stating it's not the upfront costs as much as the weekly upkeep that they are so dis-fond of, but looking at the notes posted I'm wondering if everyone has misread the upkeep costs?

From EQ2TC Preview: There will be weekly upkeep costs for the guildhall amounting to 1% of the purchase price, plus status.

How is 1% being considered a large upkeep? Thats only 1 plat per week for the smallest guildhall, and even the largest hall is only 10 plat a week upkeep. I am wondering if everyone was reading this as 10% rather than 1%? 1 plat per week even for a single toon is nothing. 30 Minutes of killsing solo mobs in Jarsath at the most. At the listed 1% upkeep even a single lvl80 player would be able 2 afford upkeep on the largest guild hall putting on only a few hours of effort a week. I guess to me it doesn't seem like a total of 5 hours of effort (at most, likely less) divided between the members of a guild per week to pay for the upkeep of the largest hall seems like any sort of a burden.

And everyone is talking like the guild-leader is going to have to become a virtual accountant to make sure everything is payed up... For 95% of the guildleaders stating this my guess is you'll look in the escrow account when time come to pay the upkeep wondering if you'll have enough, and find that you have built up at least a months worth of saving already. Considering heroic mobs give status now, and a person can make a couple plat an hour just by killing solo mobs in an overland zone I really think all this worrying over the upkeep not being payed is completely unfounded. If you really want 2 be extra sure it's getting payed for, just turn off coin auto-split whenever your guild finds the gold scarab up in RE2. 1 kill of him will pay the coin costs of even the medium sized hall's upkeep for that week.

If anything I'm surpised the initial cost of the t3 hall isn't more expencive. The t1 and t2 halls are about where I'd figured, but I'd expected somewhere in the couple thousand plat range for the full hall. (plus gl80, not just gl70) IMO the largest hall should be placed high enough that the number of guild able 2 afford it is limited to the point where the guild banners can be displayed hanging outside the hall, visible from Antonica/Commonlands. (for instance if i were to make a toon on Unrest and traveled to Antonica and looked over at the guild hall I'd see Confirmed's chosen banner hanging to either side of the door, with the banners of the other few guilds able to afford the t3 hall displayed smaller along the walls on each side.

Thats off topic though. To the point as I stated earlier, if you remind yourself the upkeep is only 1% of the listed costs per week, you'll see it's really not large at all.

Edit: Anyone know what the quote tags for these forums are? as is normal forum code doesn't work.