I like var1ety's ideas about city's inherent values. They sound great for the balance of guilds with the benefits of city ownership. The value system also seems cool. It would be nice if conquering multiple cities allowed you access to ONE benefit from the other cities, selected by the guild leader, like with 2 cities, you can transfer one city's benefit of one type, or increase city taxes by 1X. So if Kelethin has great bows, and you want them available in Freeport, then Freeport alone gets the benefit of Kelethin's bows. When another guild conquers the city, make the old benefits vanish.
I think Rogues should be allowed to buy in a city structure like var1ety mentioned, but that they should be taxed BIGTIME in a city that is not their own. They should have to pay 5X the amount to get anything from foreign cities, and the profit should go to guild coffers. Anyone who can sneak and buy should be charged just an outrageous amount of money, so that one guild can't have a huge monopoly on armor bonuses.
Think about it: one elite guild has access to all the armor, all the weapons, all the bows, all the axes, all the equipment, and some newbie guild has jack squat. With their limited money, they should be able to get access to the stuff, but they can't use it to their benefit.
Make it difficult to buy things and escape because of wandering guards, like merchant guards. Have merchant guards limited so that the newbie guilds have a chance, even a small one, of defeating an established guild.
At death, every member of any guild should be able to go to a safe place, a PVP-free zone, where they have a certain amount of "tokens" to spend on new armor and weapons. The variety of weapons and armor should be low, and the person should go away feeling very cheated. It should be minimal what a person should be able to get, but a weapon of preference (lame or lamer), and some armor (shoddy or shoddier) should be given.
As for getting you safely out of a place without ganking, what about casting divine aura on you and teleporting you to a zone randomly into the air somewhere. If divine aura protects you from falling damage, then run like hell out of there before you get ganked.
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