Vanarch or Archon system in FFXIV ARR?

[Hycinthus]

To those who are not aware, The Vanarch system in another MMO allows individuals (who must be guild leaders, at least level 50) to run for elections, and by winning, they then become the Vanarchs (mayor) of that area and reign until the next election cycle.

Vanarchs are able to set taxes for that area (flight pt tax, merchant taxes), and are able to set which stores, AH, or trainers should be opened for that area.

The Vanarchs must do real work by doing quests, getting tokens, in order to keep those stores open and to keep the taxes low. If they don’t do these, taxes in that area becomes high, stores are closed, and players get inconvenienced, and those vanarchs may get voted out next election.

Those Vanarchs who are neglecting their duties, then their guild’s reputation quickly plummets.

Vanarchs may grant “area buffs or extra exp or extra mount speed” to people who are leveling in the area.

In RF Online, their Vanarchs called Archons become more powerful, and they are very hard to kill in PvP. Vanarchs can also become HNM.

It gives more depth to the areas knowing there are reigning leaders lurking around that you can kill in PvP. I would say that in the future, perhaps term limits are necessary to prevent the same guild leaders winning Vanarchy over and over.

What do you think?

[Shadex]

My only concern with this would be that the individuals in previous games such as RF-Online that hold these positions typically are never anyone that is actually interested or considers the wellfare of their constituents but rather simply the individual that gets the most members of their zerg guild to vote for them. I would love to see more social and community aspects of gaming added to FFXIV but Square has been pretty transparent that this is a game for casual arcade gamers. I do miss the store aspect though of XI when your nation did not own a particular region the store closed. But hey, there were so many good things about XI where to begin.