What you said is certainly not untrue, yet remind yourself that in the same manner, the placing of a bounty on the head of another player and have an assassin murder that player for you could be done by private dealings just as easily. In the same way, the guildsystem of thieves could instead be achieved by simply having your thief forge personal IC contacts with other thieves and thus make allies.

And yet, all that doesn't take away that those concepts, such as the bounty system or the thief guild system, are actually very convenient things for all parties involved (except for the victims of them), and add much more depth and overall IC-funk to the classes they are designed for.

That is why I ended up suggesting that a more or less similar system would now be implemented for the warrior, thief, bard and maybe even anti-paladin classes - but instead of assassinations or underworld contacts this time, more something like sword-for-hire/man-at-arms/mercenary situations. In fact, as a thief you could seek to combine the guildmembership with the whole mercenary thing, creating even more diverseness and elements-of-surprise for this roleplaying class.

I'm such a supporter for this because I'm pretty darn convinced that this would greatly add to the flavor of the classes that I just mentioned above. That it's not a high priority on the list is something I can understand, but I do hope that it gets implemented someday. Just like with the thieves guildmembership and the bounty offices of assassins, no regrets will come from putting this in because it would offer so much more for the classes that it would be designed for. It would also create more strife and tensions within the warrior guild for example, because I can imagine the honorable knight-type warrior not exactly thinking very highly of those that go about hiring themselves to murder others for the sake of some copper. Etc etc etc. So much new roleplaying material that could come from it.

Hope that clarified my motives and reasons a bit better than my previous post did.