As a long playing member of the istarian community i have thought long and hard about how to make some improvments and purpose to the Guild/settlement Island beyond storage here is my list of ideas to create active viable settlements

1. Add to guild/settlement islands an empire town with tier approrate trainers
a. this town could be "discovered and rebuilt" or the empire could decree a new npc town needs to be build on x island

2. revise the port in and out system so that this hub is a gathering place
a. no settlement should be more thena couple of k(iemore then 1.5k)from a port out
b. you should be able to get to any same island port in from any of the same
island out portals.
3. interconnect all island via a 2ndary hub system to the main hub on each island and of course brustego.

The bottom line is that settlements should be more then raw/bulk storage repositories make them have a purpose /need


please comment or feel free to add your comments if you dont settlements will remain a bulk storage place instead of an activley sought hub of interaction