Now you have a reason to go to the Guild Hall

[Lurker Wyrm]

The Guild Hall has been upgraded! It now boasts the option to have various merchant services that, up until now, have been available only in major cities (LA, Drok's, etc.). The options are (prices listed in platinum costs:
Xunlai Agent - 10
Dye Trader - 50
Crafting Material Trader - 100
Rare Crafting Material Trader - 100
Rune Trader - 25
Scroll Trader - 50
Skill Trainer - 100
Priest of Balthazar - 10
Merchant - 25
Weaponsmith - 10
Canthan Ambassador - 10
Guild Emblemer - 10
Festival Hat Keeper - 10

The ones listed in bold are the ones that have been purchased. All we're missing now are the Material Trader and the Scroll Trader.

[Edited to reflect the options we've opened up.]

Another option added is the scrimmage battle, where we can fight each other for practice. Doing this every now and then could really be fun.

[KingOfPain]

Wait until we get a new hall. I am sure we would want to move once we all looked at the new halls

KoP
___________WTB GANGS___________
Vexheleleld Zodeth must get her mask!

[KingOfPain]

Ummm for those who doesn't read game updates... The Tengu event is on, event item is Tengu Mask.

KoP

[Havral]

Wait until we get a new hall. I am sure we would want to move once we all looked at the new halls

Not really. The Stone Isle is nice 'n' all, and the Meditation and Imperial halls have their charm, but they're nothing like the Frozen Isle.

And the Jade Isle is ass. It needs to die.

[Green_Gloom]

Wait until we get a new hall. I am sure we would want to move once we all looked at the new halls

I took a couple of minutes to check the new halls.

Meditation and Imperial look ok, but not great. I wouldn't mind switching to either, but it's not something that causes me to go: Wow, must have.

If we move to Stone or Jade then I'll have even less incentive to return to GW. Those two are the ugliest areas in GW so far.

[FoxBat]

For the low low price of 10 plat, I bought us a Warmaster for unlockage. It's a bit odd that one of the prime PvP staging grounds in the game has nowhere to let you spend your faction, plus it is a nice reference to look at every skill in the game (especially with all the new factions skills), and you can see what rune unlocks you need for the purpose of IDing. There's been enough times when I've made the silly trek to battle isles just for a warmaster when I am not PvPing so this should make things more convenient.

Whether we want to start the expensive investment in traders, well I wouldn't stop anyone but I'm less convinced of its usefulness. At best you would have a city without any pubs in it. If we used the guild hall as a staging ground for forming groups and then warped after assembling, instead of "come to d#", maybe this would have value.

I've heard the weapon crafter currently offers nothing, and I'm also curious what items the weapon crafter and what skills the skill trainer would offer to low-level characters. Depending upon how that works, a skill trainer might be handy too.

[Seijin]

Well I wouldn't mind the Imperial or Meditation halls, I like them both. I prefer Imperial over Meditation. But that's just me. I actually never really liked the Frozen Isle hall that much.

We could always do duo droks runs to make money for the guild hall too. But as fox pointed out, i don't know why we'd need all those things. They're usually in outposts or towns right where we're adventuring at. Otherwise we go to hall, zone to LA or Kaineng, then have to zone again from there.

[WarBlade]

I can see the whole zoning thing with many places to zone to and from would be a compelling incentive for the hall too. As it would have been without the hall upgrades, one person jacks up a game, people come through in bits and pieces, as fast as they are able, through the likes of Lion's Arch, to D'Alessio or Marketplace etc, where they can access the storage easier, respec gear and eventually hook up with the group and wait for KoP to finish muling.

Now?

"Meet where?"
"Hall"
"Haha, right"
"OMW"
"K, coming"
... soo much smoother.

[Lurker Wyrm]

Thread necromancy, here we come.

Well, Seijin bought the Rare Material Trader so now all we're missing are the common mat trader and scroll trader. I don't really care about the scroll trader, but eventually getting the common mat trader would be nice.

At this point it won't be worth it to change halls unless ANet puts in a change so we can get a different hall and keep the services we've bought. Until that happens though, we're stuck with Frozen Isle (unless someone wants to volunteer to re-buy all of the services).

[WarBlade]

Today we've been blessed with two awesome developments:

1.) A few of us pooled some resources and and moved some gold via Seijin to purchase a Crafting Materials Trader for the hall.

2.) That damn Wintersday thing is finally over!!! 8) Woo-hoo!