Bankless – Mass Mailing doesn’t cut it

by on Mar.21, 2011, under Articles

Is it me or is the lack of a Guild Bank just not as important as it should be to Trion and some of its players?

Sure we have been blessed, spoilt… whatever by the feature heavy “Grand Daddy of MMO’s”, but what is that supposed to mean? That we can’t complain when another MMO leaves the feature out because some people don’t see it as a big issue?

We’d like to introduce the first of a number of new writers to The Rift! Raziel317 has been posting on his blog over at An Attempt at being Interesting and you should start to see some more posts from him over here! Go ahead and let him know what you think in the comments! If you’re interested in helping out, send an email to riftpodcast@gmail.com! Be sure to check out the rest below the cut!

Guild Banks

I play in a sharing Guild. We have several people all doing gathering professions who continue to collect mats even when they don’t need them for their own professions. The reason being other players in the Guild are, of course, levelling similar professions or have use for those mats and players like to share. At the moment we are all forced to spend cash to share these mats. Sure it’s virtual money but hey, it’s not cheap sending multiple items!

Guild Banks give a functionality that nothing else can offer: a place to support your fellow Guildies, a place to put materials you don’t need anymore and can have the Officers sell for the Guild coffer or pass on to other players. This is something every MMO since World of Warcraft has managed to launch with, but one Rift did not.

It’s about time

I understand that there is a finite amount of time to do everything you need to do in an MMO to launch, but the amount of complaining that was done during beta about it and the incredible job Trion do at sorting issues quickly should have yielded a result in our favour by now. I know Scott Hartsman has said it’s on a list, however he has also said it’s not at the top of that list. I think it needs to be moved up.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say it should be at the top, but I hope it’s high – very high – on that list. People rely, to a certain degree, on help from Guildies and they are not going to get tons of it if people are having to send stuff through the post. I know at 50 it’s easy to make money and that sending a few items through the post wont seem expensive then, but right now (as people level) it does feel expensive.

Having the option to stuff your unwanted mats in a Guild Bank for your fellow Guildies to take as they need is a much better option for people. Those who want to feel good about sharing with their fellow Guild Members are more likely to do so if they just have to add it to the bank, but they do think twice when they have to shell out their own dwindling cash to post it. Everybody wins with a Guild Bank: they are essential to the current MMO way of thinking.

Do you believe this to be the case… or is it just me?

Written by Raziel317

Raziel317 has been writing over at his own blog, An Attempt at Being Interesting. He is hoping he can share a little of his unique style of his writing with more people by yelling through The Rift. He has been gaming most of his long life and has played MMO’s for about 7 years, trying many along the way. With Rift he thinks he's finally found “the one”.

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9 Comments for this entry

  • Starseeker
    March 21st, 2011 on 4:40 pm

    Having a whole account dedicated to just storage for the guild, I definately understand. 6 toons. maybe more once I start running out of space on them too…costs alot to mail it back and forth.

    Honestly I hope they impliment something soon. I’m alittle disappointed since when i asked hartsman himself what he was doing with guilds he said “we are making it more than a beefed up friends list” so far…thats only half true, since there is no way for a guild to share items they get.

  • Neonorm
    March 22nd, 2011 on 7:48 pm

    So here is a random thought that I had about this issue combined with another one: Personal housing. What if they simply made housing at the guild level? With a bank there? This would give us a guild bank and appease the personal housing people while not detracting from the social aspect (within the guild).

    • Raziel317
      March 23rd, 2011 on 3:04 pm

      Player housing is a whole “other” issue and one I sit on the fence on to be honest, however your idea sits nicely between that and Conan’s Guild Cities. I do like the idea of having a zone, city, castle – something that will give a little of that housing and the Guild Banking.

  • LadyStarlea
    March 24th, 2011 on 7:47 am

    I think you are completely right in this. I keep having to store items in my bank I want to be able to give to my guildies. Problem with this is I also need to store my personnel stuff for my crafts and have had to buy multiple slots and bag to to put it all in and still run out of room. When new members join the first thing asked about is where is the guild bank and I have to tell them Last I heard they were in the works still. Granted we are a small guild but still we are a guild who’s members LOVE to craft and help each other out. No guild bank makes this harder to do. I will admit I like Neonorm’s suggestion. It would be nice to have a place only guild members can go to to hang out, craft and go to the guild bank.

  • Blockhead
    March 24th, 2011 on 12:09 pm

    I have a guild, mainly just the fam, but i’m feeling not having this feature. Could only imagine what a pain this would be for large guilds.

  • r2d2422
    March 25th, 2011 on 10:15 am

    YES to guild/shared bank.

    NO to guild halls with crafting. Absolutely killed the crafting community in any game that has had this feature.

    Put whatever else you want into personal housing and guild halls, but NOT crafting and NOT a broker interface. That should ONLY be in the open world.

  • solance
    March 27th, 2011 on 12:43 am

    I wish there was guild banks was sad to see there isnt.
    So much for being polished and ready for the world trion.

    No to housing and no to guild halls they kill the social parts of the game every time, no one game has does it right yet.

    • Shyntyrr
      March 27th, 2011 on 10:05 am

      Hi solance!
      I agree with needing Guild Banks, but not having them doesn’t mean it’s not polished.. They said they wanted to implement features fully, not do a half-ass job on them. Imagine if we got guild banks that we could only add things too? :P I’d rather have a fully working implementation rather than a half-broken, “guild-bank-ate-all-my-items” version. I do hope it comes soon though.

      Definitely agree about housing/Guild Halls though. Trion should be careful about implementing them. Player housing isn’t too bad, since a lot of times people won’t just sit in their house.. but Guild Halls can have a massively negative impact on social interaction.

      • Derangedtaco
        March 27th, 2011 on 12:40 pm

        Agreed on it’s better for Trion to fully implement and polish Guild Banks. But disagree on Guild Halls will have a negative impact on the social aspect of the game. The 2 big games I can think of that had an extensive Guild Hall system are Guild Wars and Runes of Magic. RoM’s was more of a guild castle and you battled other guilds castles in GvG PvP. Guild Wars guild hall wasn’t too bad, just had to be tweaked a lot. I think Trion could make it happen, they have the staff and resources to definitely pull it off.

        @Solance – There are games that have done player housing right. Asheron’s Call made probably one of the best housing systems in any MMO and they did it about 2 years after launch. While AC was never highly successful, it is an MMO that broke the simple design of having single classes. Also, it wasn’t just houses. You could have apartments, cottages, villas, and even mansions for a guild. Each had bank space and it increased with each higher housing upgrade.

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