Guild Banks

There was quite a candid and in-depth interview recently that Massively did with Scott Hartsman at Pax East 2011. If you’re interested in Rift, it’s definitely worth a read. They cover launch, queues, a bit about the hacking issues, and so on. One thing I found interesting was the following:

Massively: How about plans for a guild bank?

Scott Hartsman: Yes it’s on the list! It’s not on the top of the list yet; we still have to get through our launch growing pains, and again, security is paramount now. There are lots of things that are waiting after we get all that stuff nailed down.

Actually, the lack of a guild bank is one of my present major headaches in the game. Not a game-breaking issue such as account hacking, of course (crosses fingers, knocks on wood, does the horn thing with my fingers to avert misfortune), but still – it would be of immense help to anyone in a guild. I have so many mats and crafting items, gear that I’ve picked up and can’t use, etc., that I would love to dump in the guild bank for others to use. Sure, I mail whatever I can to those I think can use it…but damn, mail is expensive. And there are the usual callouts for “can anyone use this?” in guild chat. If people play at non-peak times, they miss out on most of that.

I do know that guild banks come with a certain level of customer service problems, people doing a runner with a guild’s collected resources and so on…but seriously, in a new game that has to be relatively rare (barring all of the hacked account problems, of course – those would probably start affecting guilds as well as individuals). It would really benefit players in general.

So, that’s top of my wishlist. Followed by 1) sexier armour, 2) not being dismounted by low-level mobs, 3) more bag space and 4) a mass ban of pretty much anyone on the official forums. Have you ever seen more petty nastiness and snark anywhere else? Ok, Aion was pretty bad…but the Rift forums come close.