Petition - Scrap Guild Cities.

[Amabala]

You are playing a game which you might well pay money for. In order to get to content in that game (let's assume you subscribe so you've even paid for it), you are locked out unless you agree to do something which nobody enjoys (grinding a t3 city? seriously? If you enjoy that, get professional help) and which is 100% unrelated to the activities it unlocks.

I've enjoyed grinding my T3 city. I still enjoy grinding to improve its decorations. Doing these things I see as my personal accomplishments which I've chosen as some of my goals in playing AoC. And, to be honest, I really don't care that I have any other benefits from owning a T3 city. The stat benefits are unimportant to me.

...the point here is that you wouldn't unsub if I took away your city tomorrow provided you still got all the benefits of it.

Actually the opposite. If my city disappeared, I'd probably be so disappointed in Funcom that I'd seriously consider playing something else. If they took away the benefits, I probably wouldn't notice.

But there are people to whom the continuing and neverending grind is a very strong incentive to unsub.

You can tell that by the number of people who aren't playing this game.

You are likely right about this. But - and this is my point here - not everyone thinks this way and your assumption that anyone who doesn't must be wrong (or in need of professional help) is misplaced.

[Aulwrak]

You can actually visit the cities of other guilds as long as the instance is populated. Those instances aren't locked to only the guild members.

Gee, I'd love to see your city, I've been slaving away at mine, too. Sounds like a great thing to check out.

Nu uh.

I don't know about removing guild cities, but I certainly don't think much of them.

[Kurt2013]

If you see the idea as "introduce flexible pvp factions", i would second it. Also the idea of faction hubs sound nice.

But the whole idea of dismissing content and players (and whole guilds doing it) as "in need of professional help" a bit disturbing. To your benefit, i am assuming you have not been part much in such "grind".

Just because it is completely different from the other grind you have ingame. Similarly you could say grinding minis or Bori to pvp10 is weird, grinding raids till you find a weapon is weird, grinding khitai factions and gear is weird.
Guild city building CAN be a solo effort (thus involving a LOT of gold) up to something the whole guild can experience (so far every guild saw it as a group achievement for everyones benefit...and be that only "it looks nice now!").

I see it like Amabala. If they'd mess with guild cities, i'd be on a lot less (can't unsub...), but i would not mind (or notice), if they took away the stat benefits.

Also the amount of grind is not so much. You can truly build a nice looking city with a t3 keep just by training architect and spending the money you earn just by playing other things (so no real "city building grind" involved). You are right about the t3 and decorations a bit though...the amount of mats becomes simply insane and not really applicable for todays guilds. Lowering the costs by 5 would still make it feel like an accomplishment and not easy to do solo (unless you are rich). Also the idea of resources needed for walls is plainly ridicolous...and i would not count one more section of wall as a great achievement.
The thing is, it is also not much grindy, if you assume you have a guild where maybe 10% of people just all do the standard quests for crafting and gathering, pooling the mats. A bit similar to renown...a handful of casual people will never reach renown 20 in the game lifetime...while dozens of active players increase it exponentially.

One other thing is, that they are (apart from choosing appearance by gear and character specialization) the only customizeable content so far.

So why not focus on the good points of your idea that would add something, instead of focusing on bashing guild cities?

[GeneralFear]

Many guilds turned building their city into an event of sorts... they organized resource competitions, held gatherings on site whenever a new building was going up, posted announcements on their website or guild message of the day, gave recognition and awards to top contributors, etc. etc. Not everyone in the guild participated in these things, but it was fun for those who did. Indeed, building the guild city was also about building guild rapport and morale. At least it was for the guild I was in when I played on Dagoth.

One good thing that Funcom did with AoC was to create a game that gave players the opportunity to play in different ways and at different levels, so they can experience the game in a way that is meaningful and enjoyable for them. Who's to judge that what someone wants to do is subpar to what someone else wants to do? There are plenty of MMOs out there that are more one-dimensional... I don't see people sticking with them either.

[Braciaca]

Now I am fairly new here, only have characters up to level 40ish so far, and do not PvP at all, but I am really enjoying this game, am subbed, and plan to be here a long time. I would hate to see AoC become anything like WoW at all. My biggest complaint with that game's PvP was that it affected all players by making it impossible to speak to a player of the opposite faction. If you tried to speak to them, you would only get a message saying "That player is not friendly to you." They would not see your message either. Trying to emote your way to talking to someone just plain sucked. Having your choice of race cut in half if you wanted to play with friends sucked too. And it was that way even if, like me, you absolutely never intend to PvP at all. On a PvP server, it wouldn't matter to me at all, as I will never be there, but I would hate to see some forced faction mess on the PvE server.

Also, I would like to check out a guild city sometime. Would be cool to see.

[xxKamisamaxx]

I like the idea of building up a city. Just as others have posted, there's a sense of accomplishment for me everytime I get to add something new to it. It isn't too strange of a concept that you get what you work for. So if I get extra benefits from the time that I have spent harvesting away, I don't really see the issue. Not everyone is into PvP, not everyone is into quick lvling for end game content Some players like to craft, some like to run around harvesting while they listen to their favorite music. Me...I like to build my own little spot on the map with my friends that we can call ours. If there is anything that bugs me about the guild cities, its that other players that are not in my guild can come on our map and grab all the mats we need :P It can really slow down progress.