The guild halls are extremely old and should be changed . They were created when you first started the game and are due a major update. I have a very small guild and am having a hard time trying to afford those new halls you put in the game. Here are my suggestions (you have probably heard them a million times but sometimes it takes one million and one before you listen) 1) In each city that has a guild hall, put in a new guild hall that has the look of the largest house in that city. You already have the structures as part of the game.so no need to recreate. I love the large houses but would rather have them as a guild or a version of them. 2) If you can't add a nicer guildhall, make the current guild walls, floors, and ceilings clickable like most of the housing in the old cities (Qeynos and Freeport), to change, the color, tiles, etc. Everyone complains about not enough item count and I agree. This would really help.
I agree, being able to use the largest home in each city as a hall for smaller account guilds, with a lesser status upkeep would be wonderful. Especially since as a top level tradeskiller I can no longer do writs for guild status. How do we make enough between the 5 of us to keep our hall? Or even if we could use a prestige home as a Guild Hall - with no status upkeep for the base, just for the amenities - now that would be amazing! Think of how many homes they could sell for DBC, especially if they raise the item count, or sell the count booster to say unlimited... XD
There are two ways that crafters can use status to help a guild. One is to level the guild. That stops being possible at guild level 101. The other is to pay upkeep on the guild. That is completely possible for crafters. Just deposit the status in the GH door.
I used to support my Tier 4 guild hall all by myself my simply doing 6-7 tradeskill writs a day. The guild won't level past 101 but you still get the personal status, which like Dude said you deposit in your door.
I'm not opposed to new Guild Hall models, that may be interesting. However, I feel bound to point out that guild halls were not introduced at the start of the game. They actually were introduced as part of a world wide event in 2008 (4 years after launch). Tier 4 guild halls were introduced years later (around 2013 I think) and finally the High Keep Guild hall like a year later. It certainly seems though that it may be about time to introduce a new model or 2. Just something to keep in mind. I know people with large guild halls at the item cap. They have serious performance issues at times. So I'm not completely sure increasing the cap is a great idea. Maybe if they found a more efficient way to handle them it might work.
Your right that it was 2008 but that is still a long 12 years with no updates in appearance. They spent alot of time on personal houses,which are nice, however like someone said above, those houses could make good guild halls too. Also I still think making the walls and floors clickable with a choice of colors tiles etc would reduce item count drastically as that would be something preset in the guild rather then something added to the guild. The cities have some beautiful large homes that mirrors the city, like Timorous deep or Halas for example. They could try a couple of models like you said, of those to start. I would switch in an instance.
I have the High Keep Guild Hall I use for my personal hall. I have an alt account that manages that Hall and my main is a trustee. Many folks have a similar arrangement. I love my High Keep Hall and I have tons of swag from 16 years of EQ2 on multiple toons. The HK Hall has a huge room and decorative main floor and it works great for much of my stash. However, all that space comes with a cost of performance once you go crazy with items. When I started decorating the upper floor the frame rates slowed way down and I began crashing more than I usually did. It became unbearable. I liked having all my stuff on display but I had to make a sacrifice. I packed up everything on floor two then blocked the ramp off at the top. So now I am just using only the main hall and the 4 side rooms for item display and my frames have stabilized. The point is, as has been said before, there seems to be an issue with the engine calculating larger quantities of assets in the Halls. You would think this shouldn't be an issue because each Hall is it's own instance, separate from everything else in the game world. But I think it's tied in to everything else the server is crunching. I don't even know if there is a fix that the team could, or would address.
