Bear with me. Please. Just read it, don't get emotional until you've read it.
I believe that guild cities fracture the player base, place emphasis on grind over fun and encourage players to join mega guilds rather than have fun their own way. Let me show you how this is true and how to do it better.
The first thing we need to do is accept a need for factional play.
This is not "grind faction, get phat lewtz" as in Khitai. It is playing with and for your faction in PvE and in PvP. Let me tell you a tale of a different Age of Conan and you'll see what I mean.
Bobby buys a boxed copy of Age of Conan and installs it. At character creation after spending three days downloading - no, I won't moan about that now but seriously, people... - he has a choice of not 3 races but 6.
Bobby can create a Cimmerian or a Vanir, an Aquilonian or a Nemedian, a Stygian or a Kushite. Since his background is Scandinavian, Bobby decides Vanir might be fun and he moves on to select his character class.
He can select any character class, although his HoX is a Herald of Ymir and does all the usual HoX stuff ice, changing form to a Ymirish instead of a demon. Nice. And his Tempest if a Priest of Thor. And his Necromancer... is still a necromancer. And his PoM is something appropriate, I don't know. Go with it.
So Bobby does Tortage and then finds himself in Vanaheim. Which is just one zone, like Conarch Village. And then he has quests against CImmerians in all the zones where you currently get Cimmerian quests against the Vanir.
Now, on the PvE server, Bobby earns money and faction rep for fighting Cimmerian NPCs and that rep translates exactly into lower prices for more bag space, more bank space, horses, teleports, recipes, the works. And there's a Vanir channel he can get ready-made help from.
On the PvP server, any Cimmerian player can attack Bobby while any Vanir player can't. In fact, Bobby would gain faction from attacking Cimmerians.
Suppose it works this way all the way up. When you move zones to a non-native zone, you can choose a faction to work for. Signing up with a faction means that you can't buy from its opposition NPCs, can't use the opposition Traders, can't visit the opposition hub city without getting attacked by, er everyone. (But you could raid it, if you had enough people....)
Stuff Bobby puts on the Trader in Vanaheim is only visible in Vanaheim and can only be bought in Vanaheim. Given the way that factional players are barred from opposing faction areas, this means there is a thriving black market.
And let's look at the battlekeeps. There are three in each Border Kingdom. In CE, one belongs to the Cimmerians, one to the Vanir. Within the inner walls of these two, it's a PvE city equivalent to a top-rank Renown city. You can teleport directly directly to the inner section from your home racial Hub.
The third city is contested - it is PvP all the way. Whichever side owns that city gets a bonus to crafting in the form of reduced materials prices. A PvE or non-combatant player can contribute gold to his faction, to buy mercenaries (NPCs) to man the walls and reinforce raids on the contested city.
Why is this better than now?
Bobby is a new player. He doesn't know anyone. However, his Faction channel will gain him something better than names - it'll get him comrades. People to fight with, people to learn from. People with common goals. He may join a guild with them or he may not but whatever he chooses, he is not disbarred from any content because the Faction City has it.
There are no barriers in the way of Bobby subscribing for the long haul, nothing there to make him cannon fodder or meat for opposing players, it is easy-in.
It is deep but casual-friendly.
It is players. It is subscriptions. It is money.
And it totally wipes out any purpose for guild cities. So scrap the damn things and put the resources where they should be. Into Factions.
Players, Game Director, Mods... I put the proposal to the House.