In this week's article of The Scrying Pool, I take a look at Guild Halls.

The most straight forward way to include these services but not break the game would be to allow access to the guild hall only through a city. This defeats a large portion of the guild hall having these services and also limits the first desire of having an easy to access meeting point for the guild. What could be interesting to see implemented is a gating system, and what better gating system than an Asura Gate?

In the novel Destiny’s Edge, Snaff had made a small portable Asura Gate that he could throw on the ground and use to travel to an existing gate. What I would like to see is access to guild halls only through a city entrance, but then give the players the opportunity to build an Asura Gate within the hall early in expansion. After the gate is built, guild members could acquire portable gates to travel back to the hall.

Some recent items, such as the Belcher’s Bluff kits, had a two tiered system. Players could buy single use consumables for 5s and an unlimited version for 100g. This is what I would like to see with guild halls as well. Guild members might be able to purchase a portable gate for 1s in its consumable form or in an unlimited form for around 100g. This would allow players easy access to the guild from anywhere in the game (as well as returning from where they came by walking back through the guild’s Asura Gate) but not breaking the system since players would still have to pay the “teleport” cost to get back to these services. The portable gate could even include an animation where they toss the portal which expands as a hole in the ground that the player then jumps into, something that would be included with a simple teleport to guild hall functionality.

Services available for guilds to invest in don’t have to be limited to just the basics, though more advanced or unique services would probably need to include guild merits as an additional cost. Some of the services that could be added could include the PvP hotjoin and tournament NPCs for easy access to join PvP matches, PvP lockers, a Black Lion Weapon Specialist that trades the special tickets for weapon skins, laurel merchant, guild merchants (and other relevant guild NPCs), an NPC that takes players to their home instances in the racial cities and maybe even activity NPCs that will create instances solely for the guild personal use.

Not everything should be included in a guild hall, however. Some things that I didn’t mention that I would exclude are services like the Mystic Forge and dungeon and glory vendors. If something is only available at a single location, it is probably best left at just that single location. Players would be able to get PvP gear out of the PvP lockers and join matches from the guild hall but, in order to spend glory, they would still need to visit the Mists. Likewise with current Living World content. The guild hall shouldn’t function as a way to get to current Living World activities such as the current Sanctum Sprint, but be a way to get into the permanent activities such as Keg Brawl. After time adding a guild only activity (such as dueling?) that could only be accessed through a guild hall with the NPC unlocked would be a neat feature for guilds to own.

As for what guild halls could look like, it could be anything. A common topic is having the Pact forces airships be guild halls. Other guild hall themes could be the Zephyr Sanctum, boat styled halls like you would find in Lion’s Arch, Asuran laboratories and more. Not every part of a guild hall would need to be all that important either. Imagine a coastal guild hall that had a lighthouse players could go up into once the door is unlocked. Players could travel to the top for an epic view and maybe find a diving board for an equally epic dive in the coastal waters.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, everyone has their own reasons for wanting a guild hall. Didn’t see me mention one of the reasons why you want a guild hall? Leave a comment below or tweet @ZAMOfficial or @MattstaNinja and tell me about it.

Matt "Mattsta" Adams is on the hunt for a Legendary. Maybe by the time season two of legendaries are released he will have everything ready.

The blog post detailing what will happen in the second half of the year had some interesting things. If you haven't seen it, you can check it out here on ZAM. I want to see this new Magic Find implementation in action. The idea of salvaging the necessary consumables from blues and greens has me a bit concerned. Similarly with the ability to select a Legendary's stat. It sounds amazing for the weapons, but I fear it might fall into a necessity especially if this feature is expanded to other legendary gear coming out in the future.

As always, if you have a question for me or a topic you would like to see talked about here, comment below or tweet it to @MattstaNinja.