Idea: Old Lion's Arch as Guild Hall

[Obfuscate.6430]

TDLR: Old Lion's Arch as customizable Guild Hall. 

I keep thinking about this piece of history that we can no longer fully explore and will never return. 
While we can see old Lion's Arch in some personal story steps, it's not enough.

Imagine if the Whisper's hide out was now the Guild vault? 
Imagine if you could turn the Crow's Nest in to your own tavern?
Imagine if you could decorate the building interiors yourself. 

There is nothing else in the entire game like Old Lion's Arch. 
Might this idea help those who yearn for it's return? 
 

[Dawdler.8521]

Nobody is even using the existing guild hall in LA because Anet half kittened it, not sure how you expect them to make it a real guild hall.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Dawdler.8521

[Sarius.9285]

4 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Nobody is even using the existing guild hall in LA because Anet half kittened it, not sure how you expect them to make it a real guild hall.

there is a guild hall in LA?

[AgentMoore.9453]

1 minute ago, Sarius.9285 said:

there is a guild hall in LA?

I think Dawdles is referring to the building where you register to get a guild hall. OP is talking about the entirety of Old LA, the heaps-o-ships-and-garbage map.

There have been a ton of requests to get old LA back in some form, and while I can see the appeal of a guild hall (privacy, less lag), I think it'd get more mileage as a lounge simply because actual old LA was a public space which was a big part of its charm. There's also the tidy lore explanation of 'this lounge is just an echo in the Mists of a powerful place' which would allow for old NPCs to be brought back for flavor.

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, AgentMoore.9453 said:

I think Dawdles is referring to the building where you register to get a guild hall.

It upgrade along with your guild, but it doesnt have the actual building upgrades. Hence why I said half assed. They could have made a real guild hall in LA over the years if they wanted. I'm not going to hold my breath.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Dawdler.8521

[Omega.6801]

I'd rather have ANet spend resources on something else.

[Gibson.4036]

1 hour ago, lokh.2695 said:

I'd rather have ANet spend resources on something else.

So, let’s assume they will continue to make new guild halls. If that is the case, does your answer still stand? You’d rather they spend resources on making a new guild hall rather than repurposing old LA assets?

What if repurposing old LA actually took less of their resources to make a new guild hall than building a new one from the ground up, thus making more resources available for all the unstated things you’d rather they spend resources on?

Edited January 4, 2022 by Gibson.4036

[kharmin.7683]

Or, we could assume that they will use their resources elsewhere, in content that might well benefit a much larger segment of the player base.

[Gibson.4036]

14 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Or, we could assume that they will use their resources elsewhere, in content that might well benefit a much larger segment of the player base.

Sure, but that won’t help me understand more. I was offering a hypothetical to ask after particulars.

 

[kharmin.7683]

32 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Sure, but that won’t help me understand more. I was offering a hypothetical to ask after particulars.

 

It's completely hypothetical to be sure!  No one knows the extent of resources available to Anet.  Neither do we know how popular guild halls actually are.

However.

If we assume guild halls are popular, and Anet has the resources, then sure why not build out an old LA guild hall.  Not sure how that would be any different than building a new hall from the ground up?  In either case, I would think that Anet would have to start from scratch. 

[Sugar Min.5834]

I really wonder why the crazy obsessions with the old Lion Arch. Must be a guy thing 🤷‍♀️

Edited January 4, 2022 by Mil.3562

[kharmin.7683]

8 minutes ago, Mil.3562 said:

I really wonder why the crazy obsessions with the old Lion Arch. Must be a guy thing 🤷‍♀️

A guy thing?  What makes you say that?

[Gibson.4036]

50 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

It's completely hypothetical to be sure!  No one knows the extent of resources available to Anet.  Neither do we know how popular guild halls actually are.

However.

If we assume guild halls are popular, and Anet has the resources, then sure why not build out an old LA guild hall.  Not sure how that would be any different than building a new hall from the ground up?  In either case, I would think that Anet would have to start from scratch. 

Thaks for your faithful reminders we don't have as much information as ArenaNet. They're very needed on these forums, where it's easy to armchair develop.

Conversely, I don't think that means we can't have any information with which to make reasonable statements. 

ArenaNet bothered to develop a new guild hall for EoD. That tells me they still feel coming out with new guild halls is valuable in some way. That may change, but it seems a reasonable deduction at this point in time.

I also know in my own work having archived assets I can reuse cuts my workin time dramatically. A brand new guild hall would need concept development, map layout, environment, prop and character modeling, lighting and scripting. All of this should be in ArenaNet's archives when it comes to Old LA. Coding access, placing guild-hall specific features, modeling and scripting guild-hall specific items would still need to be done, whether reusing Old LA or starting from the ground up.

So my hypothetical isn't just a random thing I pulled out of the mists. It is based on some logic.

I could totally be wrong. Maybe guild hall specific things were created in such a way it would be harder to get them to mesh with Old LA than to build a new guild hall from scratch. Maybe they built the EoD guild hall a while ago, and have already determined it's the last guild hall they'll ever do.

Personally, I'd imagine a better return from taking the Old LA and making it a lounge. That could translate directly into cash for ArenaNet. Could also be just my self interest, as I'd be more likely to buy a new lounge pass (especially if it returns me to where I left) than try to take a guild hall with my family's four person gulid that only plays two at a time.

55 minutes ago, Mil.3562 said:

I really wonder why the crazy obsessions with the old Lion Arch. Must be a guy thing 🤷‍♀️

My 13 year old daughter didn't start playing until after LA was destroyed. We were recently working through personal story on one of her new characters, and she was fascinated enough to explore it to the boundaries of each instance after the story was done. 🤷‍♀️

Personally, I wouldn't call myself crazy obsessed. I don't have Old LA posters on my wall, and I haven't started a letter writing campaign to ArenaNet, but I do have some nostalgia for old LA. I was just thinking this morning about how my memories of launch day are of doing 100% completion with my guild through LA and Rata Sum. We did more than that, but those two places are what stuck in my memory. Add to that the emotional connection to one of my (and many players') favorite characters in the game.

Nostalgia aside, Old LA, as a city built of the hulls of old ships, filled with pirates and under-the-table dealings, was one of the most interesting places in GW2. Old LA, Wizard's Fief, and the Great Collapse are the three places in low level areas that invoked mystery to me and stimulated my imagination. Two of them were completely overwritten.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

2 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Thaks for your faithful reminders we don't have as much information as ArenaNet. They're very needed on these forums, where it's easy to armchair develop.

Conversely, I don't think that means we can't have any information with which to make reasonable statements. 

There is a demand for the old Lion's Arch. We have expressed it in multiple threads over the years, offering several of possibilities to make it come true. Sadly ANet does not really talk with us when it comes to content-development. They talk TO us, but except for a few extremely brave staff-workers, they avoid discussing with us.

The brave ones usually read a longer thread, post an answer to a few of the most frequent questions. Then the community is happy, dozens of users quote the staff-member and respond to their post. With very big luck, they return after 50-100 posts. In most cases, they do not.

Due to this behavior, the community rips every staff-member post apart. Analyzes every fraction of it to get some useful information. If there is no information, they start interpreting. What would have been the intention behind that fragment of the post. Staff looks at the mess and decides to reduce activity to 0 again. Opening a feedback thread is the best they can do nowadays. 

To be fair, they do not make money discussing with us.

-

What we know, thanks to data-minders: The old map of Lion's Arch is still in the gw2.dat. As far as I remember there were even two versions that almost looked identically. So the resources-argument is mostly out of the equation.

We had all kinds of suggestions over the years, guildhall, fractal, scrying-pool, strike mission, ... and many more. The lore was sometimes considered a reason for not making old LA accessible again. How would they fit it into the current lore? Scrying pool and Fractals are the two options that do not even require any explanation at all. Looking at the past lore, Kralk has twisted reality in such a way, they caused so many rift.

[Obfuscate.6430]

On 1/4/2022 at 5:39 AM, AgentMoore.9453 said:

 I think it'd get more mileage as a lounge simply because actual old LA was a public space which was a big part of its charm. There's also the tidy lore explanation of 'this lounge is just an echo in the Mists of a powerful place' which would allow for old NPCs to be brought back for flavor.

I didn't even think of this. This is actually another great idea and even more viable. 
The downside for myself and others with similar issues is it would become lag-locked like popular lounges have become. I don't know how valid this complaint is in terms of the bigger picture however - Old Lion's Arch as a lounge pass is still amazing! 

[The Fear.3865]

On 1/4/2022 at 3:12 PM, Mil.3562 said:

I really wonder why the crazy obsessions with the old Lion Arch. Must be a guy thing 🤷‍♀️

*a Tengu thing 🦜

[sorudo.9054]

i still rather want lobsterland gone and bring back LA

[Kelly.7019]

Well since we only get new guild halls with Xpac's I don't see this happening. What I do think would be interesting would be to add a portal to OLD LA in LA. 😄 If Housing really became a thing in gw2 I could see a community village like map that players can access and poke around old LA. Some of the doors in OLD LA could be instanced housing areas for players to decorate. Yes we already have private housing areas but i'm talking about a whole new system. OLD LA might work quite well with this. Having  a portal in LA now makes more sense to access this special housing area. There could be other housing areas in other cities as well for instance: in Divinities Reach all those homes on the circle wall in DR's community village could be accessible to players. This "community village" idea is just one way to bring back lore based or old maps to the game. In other maps some existing doors in game could become instanced houses. New drops, new loot, new decorations, new recipes, more end game content, If you don't care about housing maybe you care about making gold and you could sell this new loot to others that want to craft it. It's fun for everyone.

Edited January 6, 2022 by Kelly.7019

[Lyssia.4637]

On 1/4/2022 at 5:39 AM, AgentMoore.9453 said:

 I think it'd get more mileage as a lounge simply because actual old LA was a public space which was a big part of its charm. There's also the tidy lore explanation of 'this lounge is just an echo in the Mists of a powerful place' which would allow for old NPCs to be brought back for flavor.

I'd agree with this, and while I don't have any particular nostalgia for old LA beyond liking it a bit better than new LA, I'd personally be much more interested in a lounge than a guild hall.  I'd feel like old LA as a guild hall was a little anti-climatic; they have so few (compared to GW1, which probably isn't fair but also probably is inevitable for players who've played both), I'd feel like going back for an old LA for a guild hall would be rather anti-climatic.  As a lounge, though, I could see shelling out the gems for it.  And the gem cost might help offset the resource use, for those who are thinking about such things.

 

On 1/6/2022 at 1:44 PM, Kelly.7019 said:

What I do think would be interesting would be to add a portal to OLD LA in LA. 😄

Or even just a portal in your home instance you could build via collection quest, like that EoN portal quest.  (I've just started it, so I don't really know what it does or where.)  Again, you could use the "echo in the Mists" as a convenient excuse, while implying it's a test for some new advanced technology that might feature in a later story/expansion, even if it never comes up ever again.  😄

Edited January 11, 2022 by Lyssia.4637

[Naxos.2503]

As much as I like OLA, I think functionality should be improved in existing Guild Halls first. As it stands, they still lack crafting stations in the workshop (only scribing available), and offer little else than decoration furnishing, which is nice, but limited. I guess it depends on whether or not that changes with the coming expansion, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Kelly.7019]

I'd like that too but they went the route of selling lounge passes instead of just giving it to players in guild halls. It's like they never considered the idea of lounge passes before they added guild halls. Yet they keep making guild halls and people like to decorate. I kind of think they need to address this issue rather then ignore it. So much more content could be built around this.

Edited January 13, 2022 by Kelly.7019

[Obfuscate.6430]

On 1/12/2022 at 11:41 PM, Kelly.7019 said:

I'd like that too but they went the route of selling lounge passes instead of just giving it to players in guild halls. It's like they never considered the idea of lounge passes before they added guild halls. Yet they keep making guild halls and people like to decorate. I kind of think they need to address this issue rather then ignore it. So much more content could be built around this.

I am not actually sure what you're saying here. What issue? 
What other content could they add to the old Lion's Arch? Do you mean they should turn it in to a Fractal? That could be interesting.
I was just thinking of a solution where we could still see and fully explore the map without affecting the current time line and make it accessible specifically to roleplayers.

The lounge idea wouldn't be good for roleplayers and the cost might be prohibitive to some people but out of these ideas , would require the least amount of change (I am assuming.)
With a guild hall, it would be ideal for roleplayers and I really love the idea of people decorating it. Imagine a beetle racing course, and trees. Putting personal touches in a room or tavern . 
Many maps, hall's included are very large but ultimately feel empty. Old Lion's Arch was both large but cozy and you really could explore in all the buildings and underground. 
I think they have a great opportunity here.