Guild halls for Everquest II was announced during the fan fair - I'm going to attempt to dissect the information given and introduce my own opinions.

First things - 3 types of guild halls were introduced. Halls for level 30, 50 and level 70 Guilds - While it was later admitted that the level 30 guild halls were put into the design as an after thought, the community is still up in arms over the halls - Mostly because of the price and what is being offered. For 100 Platinum, you can have a guild hall in any part of the city, that has 10 rooms and can have a few of the amenities - Special npc's - The level 50 guild hall is 500 platinum, and is attached to south qeynos - It has 25 or so rooms and can have about 12 amenities attached to it. The sprawling level 70 guild halls, which are listed as Gnormous, are on islands outside of Qeynos and Freeport. These are listed at 1,000 platinum and have 40 rooms sprawling around a courtyard.

Right now the outrage is over the price at all levels, and the upkeep that is required.

Personally I don't see the players issues. It is far, far to easy for players to get both money and status in EQ2 today. For example, A level 80 player, when used competently can make roughly 1 plat an hour off just loot drops. If a level 30 guild had 4 to 10 level 80 players it would take roughly 10 to 25 hours to gain the necessary platinum required to buy the first tier guild hall. That's just counting loot drops that are sold to the merchants - I'm not counting rare harvests, Master chests or any of the other goodies that can drop.

If any guild has some sort of raiding force capable of doing tier 1 rok raid zones then money and status gets even easier - Protectors realm. A very easy zone for starting to raid level 80 players. Each Named mob drops a chest that has up to 24 platinum in it. Clearing the entire zone will net you about 4-7 platinum every 3 days. (I think the last raid force that we took through there got 138pp for 45 mins work) Oh yeah, A guild raid force can snag about 250k guild status while inside there (or about 2.5 million personal status each) and that's one dungeon.

Having said all that, People will argue that not everyone raids, Or not everyone has a high level character. Fine. I have a level 27 troubadour, Who has made 3 platinum since creation. Just selling his drops on the broker. I figure, If I put concentrated effort into it, I could have him at 10 platinum by level 40. It's that easy to get. And that's just by loot farming. Those of us who harvest and have trade skill classes have so much more. I personally know a level 50 guild that between it's 70 some odd members probably has in excess of 5k platinum - They don't raid (Much) They just play and harvest and trade skill - You know, Every day stuff.

So I don't see the money or the status issue being a valid point. *Perhaps, As players of this generation of mmo's we're to used to being handed the win. The ease of getting everything we've always wanted for a minimum amount of work.* I have a feeling, if enough complaint is launched on the forums about how difficult it is to gain money and how this will increase gold farming again, people who just don't want to make any sort of concentrated effort to gain something that is considered elite. And don't even get me started about players spending to get their mythicals.

Part 2. Amenities.

Supposedly there is a list of 31 amenities that guilds can get to stuff in their hall. Things like npc's that we see in the regular home towns, but instead personalized to each guild hall, Examples being.

Guild broker - For members of the guild to sell to other members of the guild with out the fear of a broker bot buying up that level 80 rare you just tossed on the broker for a trivial amount.

Guild mender - Just like a regular mender, but with having the guild having the option of covering the repair costs - but wait, the guild would need to have funds to make this work...

Tactician - Allows a guild member to place a flag at a location and have the entire guild teleport to that flag (Great for raids)

Bells to the common lands and antonica

Carpets to the sinking sands

Your very own Druid portal maker

Harvester - 100 random pulls of a level, Type specific.

Personally I don't have anything against the amenities - Except the harvester - Long ago SOE asked some of us for ideals on how to make guild halls worth while - I responded with the suggestion to have the guild halls require harvested items - So that we could add some value to the harvest process instead of having thousands of minerals, and other harvestable sitting on the broker for 2 copper each. Instead, we get a harvest npc which is going to drop the value of harvestable materials down even more, including the price of rares. I'm not very impressed with this one as harvesting is one of the major sources of my income. With a harvest npc available, SOE might as well just take harvesting out of the game, since the market will suddenly become saturated with materials by people who will spend the money for the vendor but are unwilling to give up their time to harvest.

Other then the above two parts I don't have a whole lot of information on guild halls, and I don't suspect there will be a great deal of information released until things are absolutely ready. (I don't blame them with the 5,000 entries on the forums, most complaining about costs and what not)

Flame On! ~ Johnny Blaze

-B-