"Basically, combine Dalaran's Horde inn (the Alliance looks more bar than hall) with the place you make a guild and add a guild bank. And it's all a public space that isn't actually guild specific. It just puts all the guild-related amenities in one spot and adds the convenience of an inn."

Very good idea actually. They could have some NPCs there to work at the bar to function as GBs (kinda like giving stuff from under the counter), and the Guild Creation things could be in a room connected to the main hall. Or maybe there could be some paintings, which hid the GB behind them, kinda like a hidden safe or something...

something else a guild hall should have; what about being able to purchase summoning stones for various instances.

"what about being able to purchase summoning stones for various instances. "

They have that. It's called a summoning stone, and you find it at the instance. Summoning works in a very peculiar way: It brings something to you. In the case of these stones, it brings other people in the party/raid to you. You can't stick a summoning stone to an instance away from the instance, because then you're still summoning people to where you are.

No, what you're looking for is some sort of teleportation stone. But are those needed? Travelling has been one of WoW's most effective time sinks. If you wanted to go kill Onyxia, you take a portal to Thunder Bluff or Theramore and fly the rest of the way there. What would probably fit more in line with Blizzard's way of doing things is to have portals or something that take you to a general area, like teleporting you to Everlook if you wanted to get to Hyjal.

But how much of that would conflict with the "mass summon" guild talent perk?

Yeah, that is what I was referring to, being able to port to an instance from a guild hall

City of Heroes had a great Supergroup base setup. You got a small plot for free, (upgradeable by spending your money and paying "rent") you could decorate it with either buying trophies, or by unlocking trophies from their Accolade (achievement) system. You could build transporters to major zones once you unlocked their coordinates. There was SG-wide storage (guild bank). And you could set your transporter (hearthstone) to go to your base.

So you get your little guild hall, all those feats of strength become trophies that can adorn your walls, you can get out of trade chat, access the guild bank, heck, maybe even get your own mana loom, alchemy lab, or anvil/forge setup. Perhaps crafting items is faster in the guild hall. We can already teleport to instances with no trouble with the new LFG tool, and between Dalaran rings, Tournament tabards, and the reduced-to-30-min hearthstones, we've already got options. Come on, wouldn't you like to have a shattered Frostmourne hanging behind a podium next to Onyxia's head, or for the real old-school guilds, a Corrupted Ashbringer?

Yes it'd reduce presence in the cities, but keep Auctioneers, crafting mats vendors, personal banks, and all those interactive requirements locked out of a guild hall, and you'd reduce server lag as well as have a good representation of where as a guild you've been and what's to come.

I'm with Avan on this one. Guild housing is one of those things that would be a nice touch, but it would also be a massive undertaking on Blizzard's part to implement and the effort involved would be huge for what isn't really much of a gain. Put it this way: As much as you want guild housing, would you rather have it over a raid instance with as much effort put into it as ICC? Guild housing over a new battleground or new instances? Because thats what the cost will be.

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