Guild Housing

[Coun]

One of Turtle WoW’s unique features is the option for guilds to request guild housing. All guild housing is built manually by the team, for the players. In contrast to other systems, Turtle WoW guild houses are not instanced. Instead, they are an actual part of the open world and can be visited by all players.

Who can request a guild house?
In general, guilds need to meet the following requirements to become eligible for a guild house:

• The guild must be at least 6 months old.
• The guild must have at least 10 unique players that log in at least once a week.

For guilds that have shown dedication and willingness to contribute long-term to the server's community, e.g. by having established a stable raid group, hosting community events on a regular basis or similar contributions, the required amount of time can be reduced by up to two months (to a minimum of four months).

What needs to be considered before requesting a guild house?
Guild houses are a lot of work to build. Please, before requesting one, reflect on the following questions:

• Are you and your guild planning to stay on Turtle WoW for a year or longer?
• Will you be using the guild house regularly?
• Will your guild benefit from having a guild house?
• Can you define a purpose the guild house will serve?
• Do you have an idea of your guild house and does that idea fit well into the game world and its lore?

If your answer is ‘yes’ to all of these questions and your guild meets the above requirements, you can proceed to request a guild house.

Requesting the guild house
All guild house requests need to include a document (e.g. Google Docs or PDF) covering all of the below chapters. Guild house requests are sent via Discord to Gheor#1016.

1) Location
When picking the location, please keep the following rules in mind:

• The location should not be too populated.
• The location should not be frequently used by other players for any activity (e.g. questing, roleplay) so that those players would be hindered in their activities.
• The location should be suitable for the guild house and the theme you have in mind. In other words: Your guild house being in that specific location needs to make sense from a worldbuilding perspective.

2) The design theme
After having picked your location, you need to describe the general theme of your guild house. This is the most loosely defined process of guild house requests: it is up to you whether you precisely describe how the guild house should look like, or just name a general theme and leave the rest up to the builder’s creativity, or do a mix of both. It is also possible to request specific assets.

However, it is ultimately up to the team member building the guild house to decide what fits and what doesn’t. Since guild houses are part of the open world, it is mandatory that they look like they belong. This is not debatable.

Finally, please be reasonable. Most guild houses are built into existing Vanilla buildings or represent camps. Spawning buildings or other large assets server-side is often not an option due to how they pop up when entering view distance. If you are unsure about what is appropriate to request, visit existing guild houses and use them as a benchmark.

3) Feature requests
Guild houses usually come with a set of features, all of which are optional. You need to explicitly mention each feature you want and provide the required information if necessary.

Regarding NPCs: Please note that it is not possible to build custom NPCs (appearance or armor). Instead, the team member building your guild house will pick an NPC that closely resembles the appearance you describe. Alternatively, you can mention an actual in-game NPCs (e.g. “should look like a Barrens guard”).

• One NPC with custom dialog. Please provide name, race, gender and a rough description of appearance. The dialog must not have more than 500 characters.¹
• One vendor & repair NPC. Please provide name, race, gender and a rough description of appearance.¹
• One or two types of flavor NPCs without dialog or function. Please provide names and a rough description of appearance.
• One mailbox.
• One bank mule or kodo.
• Functional crafting stations (cooking, smelting, smithing).
• One door sign or pointer with your guild’s name or the name of the guild house.¹
• One ridable gryphon or wyvern that grants temporary flight if your guild base is in a location that is not accessible by regular means. This is to allow players to leave a remote or otherwise inaccessible guild house location besides using their hearthstones. The ridable mount will not be placed in locations where it can be potentially abused.
• A gardening/farm plot

¹ For the guild name to be visible (e.g. through a sign or NPC subnames), it is necessary that the guild name is somewhat immersive, meaning it shouldn't stand out as an obvious guild name from other names in the game world. We reserve the right to be the ultimate judge of when a name does not meet that requirement.

Send a document covering all of the above chapters to Gheor#1016 on Discord. After submitting the document please have patience. Reviewing requests, building guild houses, creating NPCs – it all takes time. Depending on the team’s current capacity, the process can take up to several weeks.

Final notes
Guild bases are unique and have been around since Turtle WoW exists. Ultimately, the team member building your guild house decides on what your guild house will or will not have. If a part of your request is being rejected, that happened for a reason – be it lore, worldbuilding, balancing or other concerns. In some cases, this might even mean that your guild house will not have something you saw in another guild house – possibly because that other guild house was built long ago under different conditions. In other cases, a feature might make sense in location A, but not in location B. Debate is okay, as long as you keep it respectful and are willing to accept final decisions.

Finally, the team reserves the right to remove or alter guild houses at any time, for example when new content is being added to the specific area or after the guild has become inactive.

Final final notes
Very commonly, guilds ask for the 'guildhousea' and 'guildhouseb' building models. Please, for the love of god, do not ask for these. They're huge, they're not at all suited for being spawned server-side and they have several issues. It won't happen.

[Coun]

We have decided to do some changes to our guild house application process. For future requests, the required age of a guild will increase to 6 months (from 3), while the required amount of active players will be decreased to 10 (from 15).

However, guilds can request a guild house up to two months earlier (after a minimum of four months) by having shown that they are willing and able to contribute to the community long-term, e.g. by having established a stable raid group or hosting regular community events.

The reason behind this is that as the server grows, so does the amount of guild house requests and the workload it leads to. Unfortunately, not every guild that had received a guild house in the past has been around for long enough to justify that workload. While we are aware that this can never be avoided completely, we want to further diminish the risk of that happening, and the only way to do so is by increasing the requirements.

On the other hand, it has proven that the amount of players in a guild is no guarantee for the guild being stable and able to contribute to the community long-term. As a consequence, the amount of required players will be decreased.

Furthermore, guilds can 'earn' a guild house up to two months earlier by having proven that they are willing to stay on the server for a while and contribute to the community in a positive way.

Through these changes, we hope to make it less likely to 'waste' work on short-lived guilds while making sure that guilds that are already contributing can receive their guild house in a reasonable amount of time.

[Coun]

A new feature has been added for guild houses that are in remote or unaccessible locations.

One ridable gryphon or wyvern that grants temporary flight if your guild base is in a location that is not accessible by regular means. This is to allow players to leave a remote or otherwise inaccessible guild house location besides using their hearthstones. The ridable mount will not be placed in locations where it can be potentially abused.

[Coun]

We now offer adding gardening plots to guild houses. Additionally, we have decided that the guild name needs to be meet certain requirements for it to be visible through e.g. signs or NPC subnames:

For the guild name to be visible (e.g. through a sign or NPC subnames), it is necessary that the guild name is somewhat immersive, meaning it shouldn't stand out as an obvious guild name from other names in the game world. We reserve the right to be the ultimate judge of when a name does not meet that requirement.

Existing guild houses will not be affected by this.

[Chortles]

This is so cool. ¿Is there a list of existing guild houses that I can go check out?

[Coun]

This is so cool. ¿Is there a list of existing guild houses that I can go check out?

Not a public one, no. You'll have to go out and explore. :)

[Coun]

Since one of three guild house requests includes the Vanilla 'guildhouse' models, I've added the following paragraph, hoping that I won't need to explain why it cannot be done over and over again:

Final final notes
Very commonly, guilds ask for the 'guildhousea' and 'guildhouseb' building models. Please, for the love of god, do not ask for these. They're huge, they're not at all suited for being spawned server-side and they have several issues. It won't happen.

[Katielynne]

What happens to the guild houses that are no longer used? for example a guild disbanded?