Most of the guilds I’ve been part of have been pretty relaxed (and generally disorganized and full of drama, even the biggest ones in WoW), but I could definitely see the more hardcore or well-organized guilds doing this kinda thing. It’d be easy enough to implement in-game without requiring the guild’s GM to handle all the financial transactions themselves. And I don’t think most guild members would be adverse to paying a small guild membership fee or something along those lines assuming they aren’t paying for a subscription at the same time.

There could be a minimum base amount required by the game as a base rate that wasn’t negotiable, then the guildmaster could add a margin on top for “guild support costs” that could be a bit more arbitrary (within reason). Those costs could be automatically credited to the GM, who could use it to purchase recurring premium services within the game for all guild members at a group rate (let’s say the fancy AH example I gave above), and keep a little for guild operations… or even as a salary for doing all the hard work of running the guild.

That way, you join the guild, pay a little on a recurring basis, and they handle all of the in-game services you need. You could actually list guilds based on what services they cover, how much membership costs, etc. No different from joining a community centre or a gym, except online.

Just tossing ideas around… don’t mind me. ;)

One of the parts I really liked is the notion of charging to create guilds. As crazy as this sounds I would love that. I’ve often made guild jumping and micro-guilds pretending to be high end the topic of my articles.

Most serious guilds have a budget for this type of thing. That includes even the most casual of ones. If it was an extra $1.00 per month just to have a guild I think it would go a long way.

I’ll have to mull this over a bit more. I think I want to write about it.