Should the Guilds faction be allowed as a Live/Open faction

[Davin]

Before Zan's game died I was allowed to play a Guild clan.  Didn't get to do much with him before the game closed.  I think if The Guilds were opened up to players and they were allowed to play the Guild senior it would have to be a player who is willing to work with other factions; it wouldn't work well if the guilds became highly polarized.  The Guilds, to be effective, need to work with everyone -- or at least the Families, Religions, and even the Imperials.

I kinda prefer the "guilds" to be NPCs, and this is the basic reason - it's too easy to be preferential where an unbiased outlook is really needed for game balance.

For example, let's say that the shipwright's guild gets it into their head that some faction "X" shouldn't be running around on the water.  Maybe they've a tendency to pirate ships and the guild doesn't want to support that.  In such a case, the guild would prefer not to build or repair ships for "X", or even to let them dock at ports, and now "X" is effectively locked out of being able to operate at sea.  I really don't want that kind of bias happening in the basic game services.

Is there perhaps some way you could play in that sort of way without making it a PC faction?  What if the guilds hired out work to be done on their behalf, for instance?