Pheonix - you always make me lough when you accuse me of something you doing the best....
I remember you saying: "add IMO to everything I say and everything will be fine"
Anyway...
Factions are in game. Your guild is not. It it obviously down to you what you like to create with your friends, however I have never saw your "house" in game since v3.5. Maybe I was lucky but what I really think that you play is not so obvious for majority of players as you can think.
All medieval societies were well known to the public. Every guild has own house in town you could visit. Guild members were wearing own colors and were as transparent as you like as this was the way to earn respect and being noticed.
What you talking about is reality of 16/17 century (aka Assassin Creed 2).
What I am talking about is: How to bring game as close as possible to Real Medieval World without loosing all fun.
Saying that Castle Wars are bad is like saying that war in Afghanistan or wars in general are bad. This is true but our opinion about it does not change the world we live in. Castle Wars are part of this game as long you have castles which are worth to fight for.
There is no problem at all for mapmaker to create extra faction for role players...You put everything underground and it is done. You can call it as you like. You can add all training station you like to it.
Something like unknown did not exist in Medieval. Everybody knew each other in the village. Most of towns did not have bigger population than 2000. I came from town with 2000 pop. I can tell you that maybe I do not know everybody name but I definitely can tell you who is from my town and who is not.
The only way to become invisible was to join monastery under new name like St.Francis of Assisi. Assassins in Europe usually dressed up like monks because of that. If you like to create Real Secret Society you need cover under which it would work officially. This is exactly what Masons did.
The "peacefull" not related to any castle Faction would be absolutely perfect for that perpuce IMO.
I can tell you when I come from. I like to be a simple commoner sourounded by simple commoners who create community of commoners with some common perpuce - get rich in the most undisturbed way possible.
The biggest threat for commoners are not bandits or faction soldiers. The biggest problem are other commoners. This is why I like to see commoners who do not loose money on death and no military training for commoners, and no way to leave faction as soldier.
BTW...Use poison knife to kill armed soldiers.