I think those are good suggestions. It would also be cool if they gained XP and levelled up too, but considering certain issues I can see that this won't happen.
Gwen is weird issue. You either seem to love her or hate her. I would let her tag along when questing pre-searing, but it used to piss off my mate.
Though I know the obsesive sprawl of talking would piss off a lot of players, it would be nice to hear them say something once in a while. Whether it be a battle cry, an observation, or windging about the journey. (Another idea: What about trying to sell themselves in the town trying to get picked?) Just the occasional comment to make you think they might actually be people in the world, and not simply some mute mindless zombie of AI. I would also say that this hirling chatter either doesn't appear in the chat window, or if it does there is another check box to switch it off. Again, I could see people being annoyed.
I have to say I thought the talking issue was a point of blandness on D2's part, the henchy was this mute thing that just seemed to tag along, though at least they gained xp and come the expansion could be given equiptment too. I doubt XP will be given due to game balance issues for quests, as stated earlier. I also doubt that the option to give equiptment will be granted, unless they produce a simplified equiptment system for the NPCs, as they did for D2. Another issue was that you got one hireling in D2 tied to
your character, and as more people played with you online the difficulty of the world got harder. GW doesn't work like this, the difficulty remains the same and the hirelings are available for everyone. The point of this is what equiptment does a hireling take if there are three PCs in a party, each with different equiptment?
One way to get over this is the pet idea, which makes it more like D2, but I don't like that exactly. I like the way hirelings work in GW from that perspective; it works well with the game scope. Another option is to almost make a proper hireling shop, rather than just a line where you add to a group. Players then get all the hirelings, as they are. As they go along they can then customise their copy, giving it special equiptment as needed, and maybe even allowing a name change (which may or may not be chargable). When you create a party you then get to choose which NPC copy you include, based on the members in the group.
To delve a bit more deeply (for clarification), you only get one NPC copy. So you only get one Alesia to alter, not multiple copies. Furthermore you can only have one Alesia in a group. I think that might work better as a means of achieving customisation, if that was to be done. For this purpose it would work almost the same as it does now; you select the NPC and press the '+' button to add it to the group. If there is more than one copy available, however, then a new dialogue window is then displayed with all the various copies you could use (and maybe the level if levelling were allowed).
The obvious thing is then which copy do you take, and it could cause more party arguements. I can hear
'I want my healer,' 'no, mine's better,' and later,
'I told you we should have taken mine, she'd have survived,' 'no it wouldn't, no healer would have survived that.' That I am worried about, given all the complaints I have already seen about player maturity on GW. I wish that wasn't an issue, but I would be fool to suggest it wasn't potentially.
As for Little Thom, just to note that when you complete the quest to kill Little Thom the person who hired you says she very much doubts he's dead. Firstly because he lost his cape just a few weeks earlier and secondly because he's crafty like that. I missed that the sergent was Little Thom, but certainly it is
the Little Thom, not an imposter.
As for KoA, I assume it stand for 'Kingdom of Ascalon'.
I hope those were useful ideas/suggestions/answers.
Edit: I just saw
this post further down on the forum and thought I would link it as it is relevent, if taking a slightly different idea. If you haven't seen it, it's worth a look.
