Why have a bank alt?
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Apr 24th 2008 at 8:00PM
So Zach posted one of my favorite recent articles about making sure your bank toon looks stylish while it's taking care of your business, and I was amazed when I read the comments to see that a few people were wondering what the whole point of a bank alt was at all. I have to admit that I was once like them. Why should I give up one of my precious character spaces for some dude who will just sit around Thunder Bluff or Ironforge and do nothing but store stuff that I should just be using or auctioning anyway? Of course, now that I have a bank alt, I'm pretty happy with the concept. If you're someone who hasn't made one yet, I'll tell you why I think you'd be happy with one too after the break.
1. You don't have time to teleport back to Azeroth and use the Auction House. Let's face it, you're a busy person. You're working on dailies, you're heading into Heroics, you're going this way and that, and you really can't afford to blow your Hearthstone cooldown on a side trip to a capital city. This is where a bank alt comes in. You just send all your stuff to them, switch over, and throw the stuff on the AH without missing a beat on your main. Also, If you have multiple stacks of some stuff (As I often do with Netherweave Cloth, Arcane Dust, and Greater Planar Essences), it's nice to be able to store them so you don't flood the AH and bring down prices.
2. You need more bank and bag space. If you're a raider, a hybrid, or a packrat, chances are you're pretty low on bank and bag space. You need multiple gear sets for DPS, Tanking, Shadow Resistance, and whatever other things pop up, plus, you'll want to keep around a few cool looking quest items or old gear sets just because they look awesome. If you're that type, chances are your bank and bags are both filled to bursting, you just don't have space for anything else. Being able to mail all your extra stuff to a bank alt can free up space quicker than you might think.
This even works in the middle of a play session. When you're loaded down with Motes of Mana, Arcane Tomes, Sunfury Signets, and various green items from doing the outland daily circle, just stop by the nearest mailbox, send them to your alt, and be ready to out for another round of farming. If you want to be a truly hardcore bank alter, you can even create a new guild specifically for your bank alt, and have full run of an extra guild bank tab to store more of your stuff.
3. It's nice to get a little more centralized. If you have 2 or 3 alts with different professions all using various cooldowns and combines to make stuff to sell and use, it can get a bit annoying to keep track of all of it. Yes, there are addons you can use for that stuff, but it's also nice to be able to know that you can go to one paticular character and always find what you need, and send it off to the character that needs it instantly.
I admit, sometimes I sort of get annoyed that I have to keep a slot in use for my bank alt when there's always that one extra alt I've been thinking of making, but in the long run, having a bank alt has been nothing but awesome for me. It's great little time and space management tool, and if you've been on the fence about making one, I'd recommend that you give it a try, especially if you're a busy 70 with bag space problems. You'll be glad you did.
Filed under: Items, Tips, Making money, Alts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Starlin Apr 24th 2008 8:21PM
I was one of the people asking what was the point.
I have seen the light.
Thank you WoW Insider.
Question: Is it true that I need to level my bankalt to level 10 for backup purposes?
Rihlsul Apr 24th 2008 8:26PM
Nope, level 1 and up get saved. 10 is just to be able to wear more fashionable clothes. =)
Andrew Apr 24th 2008 11:27PM
And, if you're a Warrior, to get 1 point in "Booming Voice" to make sure everyone can hear your /2. Trade advertisements.
Electrocuted Apr 25th 2008 9:33AM
OR, make your bank alt a rogue, and at level 10, you have sprint... which I use to run back and forth quicker from Vendor, to AH, to mailbox.
Hurode Apr 25th 2008 11:51AM
I had never thought of using Sprint on a bank alt before. I still hadn't made one before this article, so I just went to make myself a human rogue named Suntrust.
Qix Apr 25th 2008 1:09PM
Level 10 is also required to transfer charachters. Its also kind of neat to see a character named Wamu or Bankaltseven at high level
S?hrtogg Apr 26th 2008 6:38AM
Make a lvl20 mage bank alt: Teleport & Blink.
Brownjohn Apr 24th 2008 8:33PM
I have had a bank alt for as long as I can remember. It definitely helps with management of all the items that you could carry. One of my coworkers, a former WoW player, makes the joke that the first hour of WoW is spent organizing your bags. If you send everything off to your bank alt, no organizing is necessary.
Savant Apr 24th 2008 8:37PM
I think the existence of bank alts represents a failure of developers to anticipate the amount of bag space characters need. I can see how people may WANT a bank alt, but people shouldn't NEED them - yet almost everyone I tank to says they have a bank alt because of insufficient bag space.
Having a bank alt to hit up the auction house again represents a failure of developers to give players the option to move around freely in the game.
Would it be game breaking to have 36 slot bags? How about 40 slots? No one says you have to give them away, but would making such bags available to craft break the game?
Let's flip it around and instead of making bigger bags, how about bigger stacks? Why not have cloth stack to 200? Ore stack to 100? Again, would this break the game?
Dealing with materials shouldn't be a full time job that requires a dedicated character to achieve.
Corazu Apr 24th 2008 9:00PM
Actually from what they tell us - it would be. Physically. They don't have enough resources to store more items for each character. Now, you can go on and on about how people use more on their bank alts anyway, but I'm pretty sure Blizz has accounted for this in their estimations.
As space becomes cheaper, they will likely increase the limits. Until then, bank alt is perfectly fine.
As for portable AHing...a nice idea...but I think it's easy to see why they didn't implement it...there's such a thing as too much control. It's been like this forever, so stop complaining.
scott veirs Apr 25th 2008 8:32AM
AWESOME IDEA - I like the concept of bigger stacks for cloth, ore, herbs, pots -- pots are small vials, why do they require so much space 5 to a stack?
Good idea dude.
rocketscientist Apr 25th 2008 9:37AM
Typically the bag space on my bank alt is not relevant. Their primary use is to receive tradeskill items, green and blue BOE's, and any other "stuff" in the mail and put it on the auction house. The only storage they need is enough to store up a full stack of, say, ore of each type, or cloth, or whatever.
Warlock Apr 25th 2008 11:31AM
It's actually a database limitation. Technically, it's a shortsightedness on Blizzard's part. They simply did not account for enough bag slot rows in the database. This is also why they have never increased the starter bag slot's space.
Now, they *can* do it. But at this point it's a lot of work for them. This is why you don't see it often. But you'll notice, in TBC they increased the amount of bank space. I suspect they'll do the same for WotLK, maybe even more significantly so. I assume the reasoning behind this is, they are already needing to change the database, so it's much easier to make these changes when they are forced to anyways.
Silverrealm Apr 25th 2008 1:11PM
What else I find absurd, is how much a freaking 24 slot bag costs.... COME ON!!! I am stuck with 20 slot bags because I am not dropping that much cash on 4 more slots. On my server the price is retarded.
Either: make the drops or re-spawns more frequent or make patterns more accessible (for larger bags). Bags are a need, not a want!
Byron Apr 24th 2008 8:41PM
Question is, why not fill your entire roster with bank alts? With expansions coming out every year or two now, most of us only have time to play and develop one or two mains anyway, leaving nine more character slots. No reason to let them go to waste, it's free bank space.
Also, start a bank-alt guild for even more extra bank space in the guild bank. Get the guild created, get a friend to use an alt to invite your bank-alts to it, and voila bank-space shared between all your alts. That's more expensive though, since it costs 100g per guild bank tab, plus whatever bribes you have to pay to get lowbies to sign your guild charter...
Gessilea Apr 24th 2008 11:37PM
I use characters I'm not actively playing to store stuff, but I disagree that most players only have time for one or two mains. Many players enjoy leveling as much as or more than playing end game. I have three 70s, one 64 and am planning to start leveling another character once that one hits 70.
Gessilea Apr 24th 2008 11:38PM
Also, the cost for bank tabs goes up per tab. The second one is 250g, then 500g, then 1000g, then 2500g, then 5000g.
C.A. Apr 25th 2008 12:39AM
Being the anti-social person that I am (still play wow all the time) I did the guild thing. I have my own guild bank that I share between all my characters. It works quite nicely. With all the dailies I'm going to be getting my 4th tab soon, which is overkill considering I do fine with three tabs.
Byron Apr 24th 2008 8:43PM
Savant, I understand from blue comments on the WoW forums that more bank space requires more storage space on the WoW servers. As storage prices decrease, it becomes more viable, but this at least was the initial reason for current limits
Savant Apr 25th 2008 9:10AM
So if more bag space would cause resource issues for Blizzard, then why not increase stack sizes? Why not stack cloth to 250? Why not stack ore to 100? One could easily argue that Blizzard is responsible for people needing so many bag slots because they have made stack sizes artificially small.
They shouldn't complain about resource constraints when they could reduce the number of resources needed to store materials by simply increasing stack sizes.