I'll bank on it
by Amanda Rivera 
May 10th 2007 at 1:12PM
Recently I donated a character slot to the cause of guild management. One of our guild officers thought it was a good time to start a guild bank system, and since I had an extra character sitting around (goodbye Fela, I'll miss you) I offered my services for managing the guild bank. So we created Donations, an officious little gnome with a penchant for bureaucracy. Our system is highly organized, thanks to minds that are substantially better at these things than mine.
We built the donations system along the gold standard. Each item donated is assigned a point total based on how much gold it is worth in the auction house. I downloaded Auctioneer, and that has cut my research time in half. The guild bank accepts certain crafting supplies along with monetary donations. Any greens or blues donated are auctioned and the player is given points corresponding to the amount of money it sold for. The points are a lot like DKP, you spend them on items or gold whenever you need them. The more points you have, the more points you can spend on items donated to the guild bank, or withdraw in the form of cash should you need to pay for some hefty purchase in the future – epic flying mounts anyone?
So far the system has been pretty successful in its beta phase. Several of us, myself included, were able to save enough points for mounts for our alts. I am hoping that when Blizzard instigates its guild bank system in the future it is something that is this intuitive. I know personally I like being able to get value from items that I cannot use (exactly how much Knothide leather does an Alchemist need?), and it's important to me that we are able to provide supplies to those in the guild who need them. What are you guild bank systems like? Do you tithe, or are the donations all voluntary? And what would you like to see in the guild bank system Blizzard is proposing as an addition to the game?
Filed under: Guilds, Making money
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
John May 10th 2007 1:18PM
we use duckiebank - no point system.
hisk May 10th 2007 1:36PM
i dont have a guild bank but i do have an account bank i usally send all my green and blue drops that i get off random mabs unless i can use them on an average week i maby send him 4-7 greens and 1-4 blues and sell them off the AH making an avverage 10-30g a week. its a greate way to sell the items u cant use but not on ur main so u cant spend it and it just grows and grows untill 70 and flying mounts.
Brad May 10th 2007 1:52PM
Could anyone reccomend any of the guild bank programs that allow you to show the contents of the bank online on a guild website?
Chris Anthony May 10th 2007 1:54PM
Amanda, your bank auctions off greens and blues - does that mean that the points system only applies to epic items? Or is there a delay between Receive and Sell where someone can request a given green or blue?
Shesra May 10th 2007 2:00PM
@3 - my guild uses WoW Roster, available at wowroster.net. it's very nicely done.
amanda.rivera May 10th 2007 2:07PM
Chris Anthony,
We do not keep any armor or weapons in our guild bank. All items green, blue are auctioned and the player is given points based on how much the item sold for. We haven't received any epics(we just opened the system up to the whole guild last night), but if we do, I imagine those will be kept at least for a little while in case they will be needed. The items we are hording are the crafting items, the primals, the reputation items (Arcane Tomes, etc), simply because there is only so much space on one little gnome.
Eldiablohijo May 10th 2007 2:13PM
All the guilds i've been in have had some sort of Guild Bank control, some do it different than others. I know that some guilds use WoWRoster which has functionality in it to allow for the display of ocntents of a bank alt.
Also some of the DKP web tracking programs out there have add-ons that will track bank contents.
I know the top guild on my sever pre-BC had atleast 4 different Bank alts. One for BWL/MC items, One for AQ items, another for Naxx Items and the Fourth was a donation bank for consumable mats.
I think Guild Banks are a good idea, and I really do like the way that you have your implimented. I am interested to see how Blizzard is going to impliment Guild Housing and Guild Banks. Give more structure to the ability of holding a bank and also more security to the items in there. (So if say the person who's holding the guild bank leaves the guild they can't just lie about what's in there when they hand it over to someone else - Seen that happen a couple times)
Ana May 10th 2007 2:29PM
Honestly, I did my best to marginalize the guild bank after TBC. Since Karazhan doesn't work on any of those blasted "set" loots like Zul'gurub or AQ20, there wasn't as much of a need to collect/compile items. Rare patterns are sent directly to the guildie who could benefit, same with items, and things that would just take up space and/or be auctioned by the guild bank are instead auctioned by the player. I really didn't want to be the middleman for guildies who were too lazy to download their own Auctioneer. ;)
The best banking system I've ever seen was designed by Sleeper Cartel. They wrote a program that would look at an item donated to the bank, and automatically find the guildy who could use it most (for instance, when a class spellbook gets sent to the bank). We pretty much operate on the same system, except that we only accept things like spellbooks. Accepting the other items is just too much overhead for me to want to get into it. You're a saint for taking on that task!
P.S. Here's the link to the Sleeper Cartel addon: http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/downloads/addons/guild/sc-redbanker/
Kraki May 10th 2007 3:27PM
what you should do, is disenchant all the greens and blues and either sell them or use them for guild enchants. Generally speaking, the Enchanting supplies sell for more on the AH than the item disenchanted.
Avonturier May 10th 2007 4:07PM
Isn't the endresult of that guild bank system the same as when you'd sell your loot straight to the AH and use that money to buy your mount (or whatever other item)? The difference being that in that case you're always in control of your own money...
Lori May 10th 2007 5:12PM
In our guild everything from raids that isn't gray or someone doesn't immediately need goes to the guild bank. BOPs get DEd and the shards go to the bank. Then the officers decied what to do with it. Mats are used to make items for whoever they think needs them and other stuff gets sold on the AH with the money going to the guild bank. The did allow us to have AQ20 Scarabs and idols and ZG coins.
UncleVinny May 10th 2007 5:17PM
I'm the banker for my guild, and we use DuckieBank, with no keeping track of who donates what and who takes what, except for a few items like soulcloth, Void crystals, etc.
Duckiebank has been a huge help. We used to upload new items to our website, but that was a huge hassle. Now that more people are getting the addon, it's turning out to be really useful.
Our bank has at least 200 slots, and stays full most of the time, so it can be a bit of a headache. But the combination of Duckiebank, Auctioneer and TBag really helps a lot.
Keysdawg May 10th 2007 5:29PM
Currently I use RPGoutfitter ( www.rpgoutfitter.com ) to maintain transparency with the guild bank. Can set different permissions for who gets to see what in the bank and so forth. Make it public, private, or members only. Very helpful overall.
Tried to upload things before, but a lot of different systems just didn't work for us.
Guernia May 10th 2007 6:08PM
Amanda, I don't really see the purpose of auctioning off the items sent ot the guild bank and assigning points. Why not, as a player, just auction off your own items and receive gold to the value of what the auction sold for?
In my time, I've donated stuff to various guild banks, but never taken anything out. I like to be as self reliant as possible; plus I really hate having to wait for someone to send me something from the guild bank - I'd much rather fire up an alt and go farm it myself.
Rihlsul May 11th 2007 10:54AM
WoWRoster is a great way to go. The guild bank in the WoWRoster system can handle making requests for items across multiple characters, etc. Nice history option if you want to find 'the greedy bastids' in your guild.