One of my favorite features in Albion Online has to be the private guild islands. Guilds like ours are absolutely obsessed with crafting. We’ll spend 10 hours a day gathering resources and have a blast. You may recall how our guild played a recently popular UO shard and was the first to not only get a house, but the first to get a second house, and the first to pretty much GM all the crafts. We’re crazy like that.
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In Albion Online, we can have our own island away from the chaos of the open-world conflict. Don’t get me wrong, we like the open-world conflict stuff, but losing our guild buildings just doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. At least this way we can have a private island to get us started, then move to an open-world city when we feel like we’re ready — if ever.
Our island is pretty nice. In just a few days we upgraded the island enough so that everyone who is crafting has the buildings they need to craft here in on our island instead of spending their hard-earned silver back in Queensmarket/town. We plan to do the same thing when the game launches in order to take care of our crafters.
So what’s the downside of a private guild island vs. an open-world city in the red or black zones? Open-world cities have a higher return rate on resources, and they are more conveniently located near higher-tier items. The resource return rate is nice, but not a deal breaker for any of us. It’s certainly not worth having to fight other people to have fun on our own terms.
Just like our guild has done in UO and other games, we’ll be hitting the economy hard at launch. Right now we’re experimenting with all of the crafting to identify what we’re most interested in doing at launch. We’ll also have members more interested in combat, and they’ll get all of their gear from our crafters.
Farming to make all of this happen was definitely quite a lot of work. Definitely on the same level as UO, or more. But there’s nothing quite like working hard to build something of your own. One of our members said it best, “I’m just happy that I have an MMO to play again.”
If you have any questions, I’m happy to help answer them. If you’re interested in playing Albion Online, I highly recommend it. Any gold you spend in beta will be refunded to you at launch, and it’s worth familiarizing yourself with the best sandbox in many, many years. Join us, and we’ll be happy to teach you all we know. 🙂
Are guild islands much different than private player islands? I have not joined any guilds yet but I have my own island like most players and outside of the crafting stations and the farming/livestock fields it is pretty basic. Only some minimal tier 1 wood and stone to gather if I recall correctly.
Pretty much similar in how they behave. Biggest differences are their size and having a bank in the front. T1 resources are important, though. They are used for EVERYTHING related to building.
Hmm, I think I’ll consider playing this one. You make it sound pretty enticing.
Hi! I just started in Albion two days ago and I’m having a blast! A good friend and I form a guild of two (for now, lol!) and we were able to purchase a guild island because we are both also very much into crafting. There are, however, some really murky information about if there are any tier caps for the crafting station that one can build on either the private or guild islands and what they are respectively (island-wise). Can you help me with this? Thanks!