Feldon 
Traditionally, when an item has been placed in a Guild Hall, that item has been considered as “donated” by the person placing it. As there is no cash value to items acquired in-game, donation seems an appropriate paradigm.
However with the introduction of furniture and other placeable items to the StationCash Marketplace, you are entering the realm of items with cash value. The ability to place items purchased with StationCash in Guild Halls has been inconsistent at best, mostly because of the Customer Service implications of thousands of players asking for their StationCash money back (or items) if they are booted from a guild they just finished placing $30, $40, or more dollars worth of items into.
This issue has been endlessly discussed on the EQ2 forums, with players arguing both sides, either that all items placed in a Guild Hall should be considered forfeit, or that Marketplace items are special because of the inherent cash value, and some even advocating that ALL items placed in a Guild Hall should be re-claimable by the placer.
Personally, I am in the camp that when you start factoring real money into the game, then you have to be very careful about transfer of ownership, and I’m not sure that placing an item in a Guild Hall should automatically be considered transfer of ownership. This isn’t chump change either. Some of the furniture sets in the Marketplace costs in excess of $30.
I couldn’t help expressing my opinion on the EQ2 Forums:
I’m glad to see that the team is coming up with a solution, and I’m guessing it will be a way to reclaim items from a guild hall even if you aren’t a member of the guild anymore. Bravo! When you start including real money in decorations, then we need the ability to reclaim them.
And here’s the response from SmokeJumper:
Absolutely correct, Feldon. We’ve discussed a “reclaim” feature, but haven’t had time to fully design or implement it yet. We intend that after AoD and GU 62 are launched, we can circle back onto this (and many other “phase 2” items).
What Do You Think?
If you place an item in someone’s house or guild hall, should you relinquish all rights to it? What if you paid StationCash for it?
I’m sure others have brought this up in whatever thread, but: One possible issue here is that some people pay others to place items in their home or hall. If they add a reclaiming system, will the buyer now have to just trust that the seller isn’t going to come by and take their items back the next day?
I suppose it could be argued that these transactions were never intended and don’t need to be preserved, since they’re basically just a way to work around heirloom/no-trade restrictions. *shrug*
This would have to be policed by the players. If you want a good reputation as a Home or Guild Hall Decorator, then taking items that you’ve been *paid for* from a guild hall is going to trash your reputation.
I’d agree 100% too on the ownership thing, while right now I don’t see any issues myself the idea of someone spending $40 on some items that then get owned by someone else via the guildhall is just going to fuel drama.
I think that there should be a way to relinquish ownership / Transfer to a guild hall or a person. Something to the effect of when you place an item you are given a menu choice if you want to donate it to the guild or retain ownership.
You can already gift items ownership. The only issue after they make the reclaim feature would be for quest related non sc notrade/heirloom items that you cant gift.
and most of those are tradeable
I think giving people carte blanche to relcaim no-trade items is a bit too much. There either needs to be a way for people to relinquish their reclaim rights on items or, maybe to keep things more simple, a maximum amount of time for an item to be reclaimed (say up to 90 days since it was placed in a home). That would prevent the case of a person donating a bunch of stuff and then getting kicked.
As it is, I’d be happy enough making them placable in guild halls with a simple pop-up disclaimer asking the person placing it if they were willing to reliquish it to the control of their guild.
I’ve never really played in the “easy come, easy go” guilds where dropping items and getting kicked may be an issue, but I still think they just don’t want to deal with it at a CS level so they’re over complicating things. But with EQ2 going free to play and microtransactions being an ever larger part of their revenue they’re just trying to keep the paying folks happy.
I think this is a must and it should not require the person to have access to the guild hall to reclaim it as some ppl might boot ppl and then block their access to even visit the guild hall or house which ever.
There is also the people that have paid large quantities of plat for people to place no-trade items in their house. Maybe an option to transfer ownership of a house item for this?
I honestly think that the in-game mechanisms for item ownership are mostly sound, and there just needs to be a way for reclaiming items placed elsewhere.
In my opinion, all Marketplace/StationCash items should be HEIRLOOM. Claim items should also be HEIRLOOM. This should be across the board, no exceptions. These are items that YOU and YOU ALONE paid money for and/or worked hard for. You should be allowed to place them wherever you want. If you decide to place it somewhere else (someone else’s house, or a guild hall), it should be everyone’s understanding that that item is YOURS, and can be removed at ANY TIME by YOU.
This has interesting implications with housing design (and the “renting” of the “Teleport Pads” that I see go on fairly regularly), however I don’t see it as a problem, just a mutual understanding (or “verbal contract”, if you will).
All other items, such as crafted house items, TREASURED quest rewards, etc, would continue to lose any sense of ownership once placed. If you pay a person 500plat to design a house using crafted materials, that 500plat should inherently include the purchase/material cost of the items, because once you take away that designer’s Trustee access, the items are yours.
So, no monumental changes to the way item ownership works. Just make sure that StationCash and /claim items are HEIRLOOM, and that there is a “global retrieval” option for items that belong to you, but you no longer have “visible” access to.
If SoE is going to implement this feature, then there needs to be a donate feature as well. Seriously, if SoE is trying to avoid CS problems, then this is not the route to go UNLESS there is a way for the player to choose between the ability to reclaim the item when ever they want and donate the item to the home/guild owner.
The difference between the two could mean that to “Donate” an item means that the item owner can’t use the “Reclaim” feature on the item, but the item may still be returned to the item owner via the already existing “return item to owner” feature.
So how this could work with Reclaim might be as simple as when the item owner places an item he owns in a guild hall, a box will pop up that asks, “Are you donating this item? Donating this item means you will not be able to use the Reclaim function later if you want it back.”
Serethiel,
I like the suggestions to “Donate” or “Relinquish”. It really sets a rigid standard on whether items can be reclaimed or not.