Just bought it yesterday, and at height was up to about 750 gold. A decent bit of scraping to do it, but that was one person. Get five people to work up 100 gold apiece, there you go. I’m still trying to get my feet under me, though. No guild starting yet.
I picked it up on release and currently have a 20th (highest level in the game) Ranger/Monk named Nodda Furry.
I haven’t done too much with pvp yet, but the quests in here are generally outstanding. The first quest for the main storyline after leaving the newbie-land is a great example:
It starts off with your inteprid group ‘defending’ a wall against an invading army. You begin going along and killing small groups of not-too-challenging mobs until you finally reach the gate. You are shown a cutscene and see that behind the gate, that is opening, there are HUNDREDS of mobs behind it, ready to charge. If you choose to stay and fight, you will of course be slaughtered. Instead, you need to, as soon as possible, turn and run back to the mission’s start, with the horde breathing down your neck every step of the way.
Combine this with some other great quests, especially the amazingly difficult steps needed to ‘ascend’, and it makes for a lot of fun.
Having no monthly fee is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I do not feel obligated to play as I did with WOW or EQ2, but on the other, needing no credit card means every weenie can (and has) infiltrated the game. If you thought pickup groups tended to suck before, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Fortunately, the henchmen you can hire are usually more than competent enough to help you when your guild is not available.
Lastly, money is not TOO much of an issue. I recently bought/crafted my 2nd highest armor available, which ran 700gp each. Of course I just discovered a BETTER set that runs 1500gp each, which will take time to buy, but if you sell everything you find (make sure you salvage as well), you should be okay.
I found out this weekend I was wrong about instancing–once you leave newbieville the towns are instanced as well but the instances aren’t locked to you and your party.
The game will spawn as many instances of a town as it needs to prevent overcrowding.
If you need to meet friends you can easily change the instance of the town you are in via a dropdown list.
Actually, newbieville may do this as well–it wasn’t ever very crowded when I was there to test this…
The tutorial towns do indeed instance – I saw a maximum of 31 Ascalons at one point last week.
I’m thinking it’ll be a lot like Diablo II when it comes to co-op play: I’ll team with my friends and those I know, and be very careful otherwise. It looks like they have some stuff in to prevent stuff-stealing (item drops are reserved for party members in rotation, and gold autoshares). But clueless people are no fun to play with.
In other words, I am looking forward to a SDMB guild. I have 100 gold to contribute on my main character thus far (Monk/Ranger “Delicate Blossom”, level 7). I’ll try to work up some more over the next couple of days. Tonight I’m trying to finish the Positron Task Force in City of Heroes, so not tonight… but soon!
Should I start up a guild tonight when I get home? I’m sitting on about 400-some-odd gold right now, and I’d be glad to donate it towards the Fight Against Ignorance.
I’m Talyn Fireborne, by the way. Elementalist/Ranger, level 8. Have fireball and stalker, will travel.
I have about 400 myself. 
Jahaziel Stonebrow, level 6 Monk/Ranger.
Giving a fighting chance to my fourth build or so since getting the game: Warrior/Ranger that is really just a ranger who will be able to wear heavy armor (once I can afford to craft it). Currently lvl 7 nearing 8 and just started post-searing. I’ll join the guild once made, but don’t be surprised if I am continually deleting my established characters and bringing in new ones. I’m awful like that.
Seems my information was outdated. I’m in Guild Creation and it says 100 Gold.
Anyway, due to space limitation, I decided to go with the Celestial Champion Legion (CeCL).
Good acronym. I was trying to think of something clever with CECL, but was failing miserably. Too bad there’s not a solid in-joke.
I’m in Post-Searing Ascalon and have a highly salvagable Scmitar that does 9-12 damage that I don’t need. It requires 4 Swordmanship.
I’m playing.
Level 20 Nec/War Secret Seth
PM me sometime 
Hey, prospective guild-members don’t even need to be on to join! I like that! Lightnin’, you’re going to receive an invitation next time you’re on.
Everone who wants to join CeCL, post your character’s name so I can have an invite waiting for you!
Got the invitation this morning, accepted.
characters are:
Delicate Blossom
Corvus Stormcrow
Epimetheus Jones
Cestus Dei
I just tried playing the game a bit more, this evening. I just don’t think I can handle it- I’m frustrated by all sorts of minor things.
If I start a Necro primary character, for example, I can never wear anything other than necro armor. I don’t LIKE the way the necro armor looks- and, with the exception of a bit of color variation, all the necros look the same. All the characters of each class look the same- I play these games to stand out, not blend in.
Out in Post-Sear, EVERYTHING ambushes you- you can be wandering around, and suddenly you’re swarmed by five scorpions… I’ve had too many party wipes as a result of that. Or you can run into a group of five healers- and never put a dent into their health, since the keep chain-healing each other.
I think the final straw, though, was when I saw a character named “Faceless Antihero” advertising for a group. For some reason, that pushed me over the edge- I guess it’s because the character creation screen actually encourages you to pick names like that.
I think I’ll just have to go back to WoW.
What if you take a secondary? You can’t wear armor for the secondary class? I have a Monk/Ranger who wears ranger armor.
Are you going out by yourself with some henchmen or are you in a group with people? I’m doing the former, my Mo/R followed by a Fighter, a Ranger, and another Monk. We’ve had no problems so far except for the Escort Supply Caravan quest where we ran into a Charr healer and warrior who were too strong for us. We finally beat them but they had already wiped the caravan. Other than that, we do just fine even against five Rock Elementals. Such large ambushes are pretty hard to avoid once you have practice.
There’s always going to be an idiot somewhere.
Oops, I meant ambushes get easy to avoid. You’ll start learning where to look for them.
I’d love to wear Ranger armor on my Elemental/Ranger… but all the armor shops sell Elemental stuff. You sure about that?
I keep trying to like the game… I think the main problem is that it’s not a real solo-able game, and good groups are hard to find.
I think so. Look for items marked “Wanderer’s”.
That’s true. The only way to successfully solo post-searing is to hire henchmen, as I did. Some places have henchmen that are higher levels than others. I know Fort Ranik has level 6 henchmen while Sardelac and Ascalon City only have level threes.
I’m hoping that having an SDMB guild will help with the soloing. I do get the impression that grouping is a good idea… nearly required, in fact.
My characters are now in CECL – I found out that having any character join makes all of them do so, which is handy – so I am looking forward to some grouping with non-idiots.
Perhaps we can set up a time to meet up?