Outposts were the temporary world camps that were talked about more than 2 years ago. They are different than Guild Halls which will likely be an in city feature. Guild Halls were briefly brought up in recent dev streams but nothing concrete was said either way. The along with regular player housing will likely be significantly post launch, though guild halls might get bumped up.
I think Guildhalls are not a problem as long as you not "overpower" them. As long as a guildhall is mostly a "signboard" for your guild, or to hold guild meetings or host a fun event guildhalls are totally fine.
If you start to give all kind of "goodies" (fast transportation, access to banker, auction house, tradeskill stations, etc...) things start to go down, because player have all the important stuff within a few steps.
LastObelisk said:In regards to a question asked during the May Developer Roundtable which was "What are you doing to prevent cities from being empty because of players hanging out in their guild hall."
Cities becoming empty is tough to avoid. People are naturally going to gravitate to one zone, where you can buff, trade and otherwise interact with the most other players. One idea that could help would be to utilize a world-wide "OOC" channel with portals around cities that can take you to other cities. Each city wouldn't necessarily have a portal to every other city and access to those portals could be obtained through quests or cumulative service to the city (faction).
However, if a city doesn't offer enough opportunity or reason to be there in the first place for anyone but lower levels, it's going to become a ghost town either way.