Feldon From EQ2Players:
The choosing of a guild name is a very important rite. To help ensure that your new name is considered carefully, we are introducing Guild Name Change potions at the price of 5500 SC. We believe this price is fair for those who do want a name change, but will also serve as a deterrent to those who might want to frivolously rename their guild every time they have a kerfuffle in the lands of Norrath.
There has always been the option to disband a guild and create a new one with the desired name, but think of all the work and sacrifice that went into Guild XP and levels!
Comments after the jump…
Missed Opportunities
So if your Spidey Sense was tingling this weekend during the Double StationCash weekend, and you thought “You know, I heard about these Guild Rename potions a few months back. Something tells me that the guy who priced out this StationCash item doesn’t share lunch breaks with the team who picked this weekend for Double StationCash. I should probably stock up!” well kudos to you. You got your Guild Name Change potion for $27.50. For everyone else, that’ll be $55 please.
Come to think of it, game cards have been getting scarce at major retailers. They’re just getting harder to find.
Now, StationCash is still not giftable, but if the Guild Rename potion had been announced along with the Double StationCash promotion 2 weeks in advance, then guilds could have taken collections from their members (by mail) in the form of StationCash cards. You would have hundreds of players very publicly going out to stores buying StationCash cards and then mailing them to their guild leaders just to rename guilds, and getting a decent price in the process.
This would have been a huge opportunity to show retailers that these cards are worth carrying.
I thought 5,500 was a bit much but the majority of posters on the official forums thought it was ok. I just couldn’t see it costing more than the SF expansion or 2 prowler mounts that everyone made such a fuss over. I didn’t name my personal alt guild, in fact I wasn’t even a member until about 20 seconds before I took it over so I didn’t choose the name so I was hoping for a guild name change. At that price though, I’ll stick to not loving the name. I’m a fan of the marketplace and I’ve bought alot of items/goods there but, in my humble opinion, in comparison to the sc prices of other goods/services (SF expansion @ 4,300, prowler mounts @ 2,500, Name, race and gender change potions @ 1,500-2,500)it’s way to pricey.
I actually like the price,it’s steep yes, but hopefully the price will deter guilds from greifing or just being complete jerks then going and changing their guild name so you don’t know it’s them. A guild name change should be something carefully thought out, I can think of maybe 2 instances where you’d want to change the name. 1. If you inherited a guild with a crappy name (as the above poster mentioned) or like me who ended up leader of a guild (luckily mine has an awsome name) 2. if you were part of a guild who had a bad name, and now none of the members are the same but the community opinion of that guild is still the same and you are having trouble finding members. Baring these two instances I don’t see a real need for it….guild naming is much like getting a tatoo, you have to think about what it will look like a few years down the road.
Its meant to be pricey to minimize shitty guilds from constantly changing their names and wasting peoples time with their drama filled, theiving, or w/e else ways they may have to trick or scam people. They may do it once or twice at 55 bucks, but I doubt they’d do it much more.
What Zianlo said. It’s pricey to keep guilds from changing names constantly, be thankful you can change it at all.
Can’t agree more with Zianlo.
It seems as if it would be more for a casual guild who progresses into something more serious and want a new title to match. If someone wants to scam someone, it would be easier and cheaper to disband the guild and reform it. If it was about covering up potential scams, the guild name AND player names would need to be changed. They already have player name change potions, which would be a lot more useful to potential scammers.
The reason the cards are getting hard to find is because retailers make little to nothing off them.
The intent is for you to specifically look for them and then purchase something else while in the store.
Honestly, I foresee it being likely that most retailers just won’t ship them anymore because the stock will leave the store too slowly.
The price is high, but seeing that it probably took about a day of developers time to implement this I guess the profits back will be pretty small even at $55 seeing how rarely its likely to be used.