Here’s the thing, and I’ll start with a more obvious example that anyone who entered the stress realms will be able to understand…
I cannot STAND having no flight point in Goldshire and Eastvale, etc. I hate the “one flight point per zone” system. I hate all that running (calm down, my #nochanges dude, I’m getting to a point).
Adding the flight points would seem so benign and like the only right thing to do.
BUT…
It is the fact that everyone had to run all that way and fight through murlocs and deal with the area with only 16-slots of bags space just to get here–not to mention all the mobs he had to carefully pull and fight one at a time to reach this particular spot–that we’re all so kind to each other.
The mobs being more powerful, the run being so tedious, the bag space being more precious with fewer opportunities to empty them…it all ends up making people treat one another better because taking something from another player suddenly has importance and weight. This guy ran for 10 solid minutes to get here. He had to circle this area and figure out how to pull it one at a time to work his way to this mob and that loot chest in the back, there. Sure, I could run in while he’s fighting that mob and take the loot…but most of us WON’T, even if we would in current WoW. No, most of us will wait for him to tag it and then help him kill it. We’ll heal him or buff him or otherwise be useful instead of being jerks because in Vanilla, taking something from that guy means you just did something seriously unjust. In BfA, it’s just a slight annoyance, but in Classic, it’s a much, much bigger deal.
In Vanilla, we were more polite BECAUSE THERE IS NO FP IN EASTVALE OR GOLDSHIRE AND IT TOOK FOR-FREAKING-EVER TO GET HERE, clear to the quest mob, and get access to that chest back there. He EARNED that chest.
Being a troll for giggles is one thing, but somehow it’s less funny and much more like bullying in Vanilla, so there’s less of it. Sure, there are jerks, but most aren’t like that and won’t be. The difference is felt immediately in the Classic environment, and restoring the tedium of the world is what brought it back.
Adding the FPs back would destroy that dynamic. It may sound minor, but it’s HUGE.
Now–back to guild banks:
The way this worked in Vanilla is that one person was designated the “Bank Officer.” This guys job was to maintain an alt with full bag space (generally donated by guild members) in the bank and on his person. To this alt were mailed all the things that “belonged to the guild.”
Do you get how important that was? Do you get how much it meant to trust someone with that office? You read about the nightmare stories of people getting angry and stealing everything, but most of us didn’t experience that. For most of us, the guild bank was a highly-esteemed guildie who was appreciated for his/her organization skills and patience for taking on the task. How much more do you value the guild bank when the guild bank is a person? How much nicer are you to your guild mates and how much more of a team do you have to be with one another when the guild bank…is a person? It changes things, and if the guild is a toxic group instead of a healthy one, the guild bank and how it all gets handled is a huge marker of that toxicity or health.
It’s important. It’s massive. Like the flight points, it seems little. Like the flight points, it seems like giving us the improvement would be an obvious answer to some bad community habits. The reality, however, is that it would have serious community consequences.
I love guild banks in retail. In my BfA guild, I’m the lady who organizes the bank, handles asking people to restock things, and monitors what goes in and out more often than any other guild officer. I freaking LOVE that thing.
In Classic, you can’t have a guild bank…because the guild bank has to be a person. It changes the tone of everything.
