Raging over "Guild Halls"

Something that really gets me raging is when other people rage about "Guild Halls," or the lack thereof. Throughout my day I read WoW.com (formerly wowinsider.com), MMO-champion.com, and occasionally the forums at Worldofwarcraft.com. Going through the comments and forums on the first two sites I mentioned, I can usually get in a pretty good rage over the idiots and the comments they leave.

Here is a quick preface, at Blizzcon this year they told us a lot of things they are going to do to change guilds (and I would like to think all of them) for the better. TONS of things. Then after all the cool announcements and discussion one commenter says, "We didn't get guild halls, so screw it. Not interested in the changes." Of course this sparked a couple replies and a down ranking, but this is exactly what I want to address, this reverence for Guild Halls.

When I first thought about Guild Halls, I thought they were a complete waste of time and I don't know why anyone would want them. It seems really stupid to sit in a room with your guild when you can already chat with everyone and meet up for screenshots anywhere in the game. After thinking about it a little more, I realized it wouldn't be that hard to implement in the first place, and could even be cool.

My idea for the creation of Guild Halls and what they would contain.

First Blizzard gives everyone in a guild a guildID, exactly the same as a raid ID. They make an instanced portal in all major cities that everyone in your guild can go in taking you into the Guild Hall. I don't think the Guild Hall should be customizable like "The Sims" or "Animal Crossing," just have your guild tabard on the walls and then a throne, for the guild leader, a big table with food and chairs, and other benches in the room as well so everyone could sit. Another idea (which I think is totally awesome) is having a "trophy case" on one wall that whenever you take down a boss you get their head on display with a clickable plaque that reads "Soandso Guild defeats Onyxia 08/27/09." This could only be done for the last boss of every raid as to not clutter the screen. Also maybe have some other perk of having the Guild Hall like a reagent vendor or the guild recipe vendor that Blizzard brought up in the Guild Panel at Blizzcon. I honestly don't think that this would require too much effort and it wouldn't desert major cities like Blizzard thinks.

Which brings me to my next point, Blizzard has said they will not implement Guild Halls because they don't want major cities to become ghost towns. I can understand this, but if there is no AH, no bank, no Boss Dummy, or anything like that people would still need to be in major cities. If the Guild Halls were cosmetic, the people that wanted to use them would and would shut up, and the people that actually get on the game to play the game and not sit around in major cities for hours, would go about their business.

Since it is HIGHLY unlikely Blizzard will put in Guild Halls, no matter how relatively easy, I have a solution for all the people that want Guild Halls. Go to any major city and find a remote place that no one ever goes (like that room in Org in front of Thrall's room or ANY PLACE in Silvermoon City) and designate that area to be the Official Guild Hall. For example NO ONE goes to Silvermoon so find a tavern where there are tons of tables and chairs and say, "Hey guild, this is our Guild Hall, so everyone meet up here when you are not doing anything like actually playing the game." If you want a more practical location, go to Shattrath and tell your whole guild that your new guild hall is on the second floor of the inner dome in Shatt and then you have access to ports to other major cities, as well as a hearth to Dalaran since that is pretty much where you need to be for everything besides the AH.

So, really, I don't have a gripe with the idea of Guild Halls. If we got them, great. If we don't, oh well. I really have a problem with people acting like Guild Halls would be the best thing that happened to WoW since 30 minute hearthing. Seriously "retpallyjil," there were so many good changes announced that would be coming to guilds that acting like Guild Halls would be better than any of them is really stupid. Also, because Blizzard has stated we are not getting them, QQ and constantly bringing it up doesn't look like it is going to help.

Finally, I want to give a nod to "XeroThree" who commented on a WoW.com post about Guild Halls. Turns out, he had the same idea I did, which I read today when I was going back looking for links for the post. Cliché "great minds..." quote?