For players that may not know, back in 1.12, there weren’t any guild banks like the ones in retail. Players united together and managed resources, usually organized via alts. Trust was very important, especially if the guild bank alts accounts were shared. We had to foster a culture of trust.
Do you have any advice for running a guild’s bank?
Here’s mine:
Be transparent. The guild bank doesn’t exist so guildleader/officers can use it as a personal slush fund. Keep an organized tally of what is available, who donates resources, who gets resources, and make this information available to the entire guild.
The only thing that would even remotely work is having a guild discord and have a channel specifically for the guild bank alt. Maybe like there has to be a screenshot of before and after something is taken out/put in to let people know what’s going on
Use many different players to hold guild resources. Divide the guild resources by level of trust if that makes you feel better, but involve many players. Give them a reason to feel they are valued and trusted. This will increase the chances that they become invested in the guild.
Divide each of those guild resources among several different players. Don’t give all the thorium to Johnny. Spread it out among Johnny, Tom, Dick and Harry. Try to spread each resource out among players that are typically online at different times. This will help to ensure that there will at least one of them will be online should a guild member need a particular resource.
Do not “force” or “require” that players send everything to a guild bank alt. Allow players to store anything they obtain while not in a guild group. Allow them to “donate” directly to a player who needs a given item.
Be as transparent as you can. Have those guild bank alts maintain “logs” and keep a master spreadsheet and running log available and up to date on the guild website that everyone can check. If Johnny sent 20 devilsaur leather to Billy, he should be able to go to the website and see that Billy logged 20 devilsaur leather and the total count of devilsaur leather increased by 20.
Discourage putting those guild resources at risk by account sharing. Choosing to share accounts not only puts those guild resources at risk, but also puts the reputation of your guild at potential risk. Gkicking anyone who is caught sharing accounts, even if that person is the raid leader and main tank, is not unreasonable, IMO.
Guild bank alts can be just as effective as guild banks if they are set up to maximize their effectiveness.
It’s a little difficult in Vanilla but it does need to remain in the hands of the leader and some selected officers who are perpetually online. There should be a pinned-to-Discord Excel spreadsheet that logs quite literally every addition and subtraction.
You should also keep garbage out of the guild bank and keep it to just bigger things like crafting mats, consumables, raw gold, etc. Don’t be sending greens there before they get D/E’d. Sell epics and blues from raid bosses or raid trash and log the gold. Screenshots can help if officers are in charge of selling Tier BoEs.
I’m also gonna note that a guild can benefit itself largely by keeping things in-house. If you can have a couple dedicated enchanters and people in-guild mail them greens and blues and tip them for their crafts, your enchanters will get to a point where they have too much gold. I had buddies in private servers who had maybe 15k by the time AQ40 came out, spread over a few toons. They did everything for the guild for free at that point. Leatherworking, tailoring, blacksmithing, etc. Don’t just AH or use an addon like Auctioneer or Aux after you take care of yourself.
A lot of the great raiding guilds do this and it generates gold within the guild. People are able to buy better patterns, give away flasks, etc. It gets really nice if you take it fairly seriously and have ~80% contribution.
Well yes I do.
1 for the guild. 2 for me.
2 stacks for the guild. 1 for me.
Voters don’t win elections. The counters do. Keep counting!-Name this movie for bonus points!
Figures never lie. Liars figure. LOL
Seriously though.
All you have to do is not be stupid and you will have free gold mailed right to your bank alts mailbox.
The best scams are the ones that can’t be proven!
Despite what some of those who want the non vanilla QOL convenience of guild banks would have you believe, guild bank alts can be as effective as guild banks if they are set up in such a manner as to maximize their effectiveness, including detailed logs available for all members to see.
Really too old to care about how a “guild bank” is managed. I’ll basically go by the advice the bathroom attendant gave me at my buddies bachelor party (we were at a strip club). At that point in my life I had never experienced a bathroom attendant and he had a nice tray filled with candy, cologne, gum, combs/brushes, etc. It was just sitting there with a bowl filled with a few dollars next to it. I asked him how do I get some of the gum from the tray and he told me one of the best things ive ever heard in my 35 years of existence. “You put something in you can take something out”.
Mind. blown. I gave him 10 bucks for a small pack of gum and the solid advice.
Yeah totally agree, this is how we did it too, but oh man our spreadsheet was a monster, I spent hours in that thing. This time around, whewww I want to try for a little more autonomy to cut back on admin time
If you’re planning on doing it honestly : my advice is “Don’t” enormous waste of time and effort that’s sure to get random people in the guild bothering you nearly constantly for some stupid reason or another.
Now, if you’re planning on doing it to get rich… The trick is to get the guild to just fall apart while you own the bank, because you aren’t a ninja if the guild falls apart on its own. Best practice here is steer the guild toward loot council, and be very inviting towards guild members, particularly officers, being able to bring wives, girlfriends, mail order brides, and/or women they may not even know, but are totally convinced they are going to sleep with, all into the guild. Then help orchestrate activities so those women spend all their time in game talking entirely with other dudes in the guild that are not their husband/boyfriend /the guy who thinks he’s totally going to score this time.
The drama will find (and bury) the guild, and the melt down should give you all the justification you need to leave for a better guild, while taking the entire bank with you.
As an added bonus it looks good on your next guild application…because you had to be a good guildy to selflessly and patiently dedicate your time to managing the gbank for those immature people who couldn’t separate their personal lives from wow.
If all else fails, make guild bank officers sign a contract. Blizzard might not do anything if Johnny steals your guild bank, but a contract is a contract is a contract. It might be difficult to explain to a judge what a “world of warcraft” is, but if person A agrees to do X under pain of Y, as long as the contract is legal, it should be enforceable.
Honestly, an old school guild bank is no more vulnerable to being stolen than a TBC+ guild bank. Bank robberies are going to happen, all we can do as players is try to mitigate the risk. The best way for Blizzard to mitigate the risk would be to disallow server transfers/name changes and investigate allegations of guild bank theft.
There a couple of posters who want the non vanilla QOL convenience of guild banks added to Classic and are therefore trying to paint guild bank alts in the most dastardly way possible, likely in the hopes of garnering support for their desired non vanilla QOL convenience.
I think the vast majority of posters in this thread have been trying to be helpful and offer suggestions that would help a guild to maximize the effectiveness of a system of guild bank alts, though.
Everyone who was at the raid is entitled to the mats that dropped. It shouldn’t take an act of congress to get core leather to make hide of the wild. Especially if you’re the guild LWer. Time and again I see officers getting use out of raid mats and no one else.
Well you have one guild skinner. It doesn’t matter how many 315’s you have you pick one and they skin. They send all the mats they skinned to the gbank. All the mats go to the guild bank after the raid. What I mean is a random guild member who shows up to every raid on time with consumes etc and pulls his weight shouldn’t have to beg/barter/buy mats from the guild bank that dropped/skinned/mined in the raid they attended. Even if they aren’t a skinner/LWer but they need the mats to get an item crafted for themselves they should be allowed to have them. They can’t sell these mats or even craft an item to sell. They must need the mats to make an upgrade they will use.
I skin ony and send the gbank ony scale cloaks. I send them core leather when i skin that. If I need some it shouldn’t be hard to get. I should only need to ask since I put my time and effort into the raid they were acquired in.
As another poster asked, please elaborate on exactly how you distribute those mats (including, but not limited to core leather, dark iron ore, elementium ingots. sulfuron ingots).
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