http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/10571307186#3
Background:
Since the development team is heading towards the path of soul binding for legendary and set items, one of the issues this is presenting is being able to share these items within group play for example. The solution the developers presented was that these items will be tradable within a 2 hour time frame for all party members that are a part of that game instance.
What about the possibility of items that can become temporarily bound to a clan?
Clan Bound Items:
When a player (basically referring to a Battle.net account) decides to become a part of a clan, any soul bound items become temporarily tradable within that clan only. The original account binding is not supplanted by this clan binding.
This provides an incentive for players to become a part of a larger community (and also therefore, incentives the use of an implemented feature of the game client). Since not everyone can always be online at the same time, some players may potentially miss out on this ability to play and trade these legendary/set items leaving them out from the fun.
By making these items temporarily bound to the clan, players within the clan have far more flexibility to play whenever they are available, and not feel left out from the findings of the groups who were able available.
Example: Say if I’m playing and a friend isn’t online at the moment. I happened to find a legendary (not a smart drop) that would be a perfect upgrade for one of their slots. 2 hours has unfortunately elapsed and there was never any opportunity to pass that item along. The above would solve that issue.
Mechanics:
So long as an account remains part of that clan, the item remains tradable and usable for every member of the clan. Once an account leaves that clan (voluntarily or is removed by the Clan leader), the item(s) are either moved back to the stash of the original player that it is soul bound to (or if their stash is temporarily filled, mailed back to them using the in-game delivery system that is normally used to deliver in-game rewards like the CE wings). If that item was equipped by someone else in the clan, they will receive a message (via the games current broadcast message feature) that this player had either left the clan/been removed from the clan, and that they no longer have those items.
Likewise, if there are implementation plans for a shared clan stash, the mechanics would be the similar to the above. Any BoA legendary/set item placed into this shared clan stash would become temporarily bound to the clan. Once an account leaves that clan (voluntarily or is removed by the Clan leader), any item(s) that were soul bound to that account which were still in the clan stash, would be removed, and sent back to the original players stash per the above.
Followup:
Interesting idea. I do think it would create some problematic situations though:
1. Would random people just join to get the benefits out of this mini economy system?
2. If someone borrowed an item and decided not to log on for 6 months, does that item just go to waste?
3. People in large clans would have a huge advantage over small clans, wouldn’t they?
Good points! I think point #2 can be solved with an inactivity timer. Thus say that particular player is using someone elses account bound item, if they are inactive from actual game play with the clan for some period of time, that item gets sent back to the original account that it is bound to (thus ensuring it doesn’t become inaccessible and tied up).
Points #1 and #3 are more complex though (I mean, there are potential solutions but ones that create more design and coding complexities) and were likely also issues the dev team have already looked at when it came to how to deal with allowing social trading of these items.
Added Clarification:
The main reason for not supplanting the original account binding completely via clan binding in the above proposal is to address the ability to circumvent the thing that is causing the dev team to implement soul binding on legendary/set items in the first place (where they don’t want unlimited trading of these items which they are probably going to buff/enhance significantly, outside a very limited group of people; i.e. the ones you are playing with).
This particular idea therefore may not be the exact sort of Clan Binding some are looking for. It could also be an idea they’ve already explored but felt was too complex (thus opting for the much simpler, tradable for a period of time within the same co-op game instance they are currently toying with), or still didn’t meet their objective (which could be only wanting such items tradable for those actively playing together in the same game).
