Guild Taxes, Keeps, and Keep Claim Gold Bags
Overview
Keep takes are a very expensive affair. Many guilds have had their
finances devastated at one time or another by a keep take misfire
by a careless guildie, the stories are legion. Or more simply, the
guild greatly underestimates the cost of the endeavor and simply
run the coffers dry.
It comes down to whether the guild can or wants to deposit
enough money on a regular basis to sustain a commitment
to the keeps of the realm. For us the answer was a resounding
no. In surveys, questions in guildsay, and opinions shared, it is
clear that as a casual active guild there is no appetite for huge
deposit requirements from guildies to support this.
Arguments about the cost of maintaining keep claims and the
often thousands of gold of demands on guildies has lead to more
than a little drama guild after guild. One guildie forgetting to turn
off a keep after a zone lock can generate 300-800+ gold per day
in losses. Even without crisis mistakes, keep claiming can
generate thousands of gold in support requirements a
month. One such oversight in the past generated over 500g in
losses to the guild.
Benefits to Guild
Unfortunately our own extensive tests show that guild progression is
hardly affected by keep claims. However, gold bags won by claims
in zones that lock in T4 generate gold bags which contain annihilator
armor which can be sent on to guildies.
A cross-your-fingers keep claim, as opposed to one carefully selected
and managed can often take 50g-200g to generate one gold bag, surely
much less with good/lucky timing.
As annihilator armor is gained most often by day-to-day RvR, one might
wonder whether the value of each piece is worth the cost. For example,
6 items on character x 50g x #chars = well, a lot of gold. Especially
for armor that will likely soon be surpassed by greater ward armor.
I think the only value to guildies of the gold bags that is justifiable for
the gold that must be gifted by guildies to claim keeps is in helping
guildies finish their lesser ward set when they are far from
finishing their greater ward set. This is because the chances of
getting annihilator during a lot of RvR keep takes isn't so bad, but the
chances of getting a particular annihilator piece can be somewhat
daunting.
At 50g+ one may still debate the value of even this even for this very
targeted purpose, relative to the grief of guildies having to gift the gold
to support this effort. I think this can be mitigated by carefully choosing
the periods during which we claim keeps.
Possibilities
We've floated some possibilities out there if people are interested and
we do a mix of it:
- Keep take nights, likely alliance events.
- Someone with lots of money goes on honor principle to keep
guild bank up with keep losses.
- Set up a structured regimen of heavy guild merchant donations.
.. you get the idea .. let me know if you can think of something else!
Keep Take Rules
If you claim a keep, you must:
- Unclaim it when the zone locks!
- Find someone to watch it for you when you log out,
and if not, stay up to babysit it or find another guildie
to take it on!
- Deadbolt it!
- Rank up and down door according to common sense
Faithfully Yers,
Best Regahds,
Dwooid of Caledor