Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsWhy 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 3 of 3)
Silverrealm Apr 25th 2008 1:32PM
I would just use one of my alts as my 'bank mule'. This is what I did for a while with my Alchemy alt to supply pots to my main. Then when I was using my alchemy alt a lot for lelveing I made my bank alt. I'm not sure how frequently you use all your toons, but surely one of them is not used as often as the others?
Matt J Jun 5th 2009 3:37PM
A guildie sold me on the Bank Alt idea, and I haven't looked back. It's worked out great so far, it's nice to be able to stop at any settlement area and clear out my bags really quickly.
My biggest problem so far is that I'm seriously considering leveling my level 7 hunter bank alt to level 20 so I can get aspect of the cheetah....
anonymousshadowexist Apr 25th 2008 4:47AM
Protip: If you're really feeling the 10 character per realm limit, like I am and the other gentleman above was (due to wanting to level a toon of every class, as well as keep twinks), advice: since a twink doesn't do anything except run around in a city they can make decent bank alts as well. About 1-2 bags will obviously need to be devoted to them for their own potions, ammo, engineering stuff, etc. but beyond that they just have free bagspace. And yes, feral swiftness/aspect of the cheetah/sprint are great things to have as a banker :D
Gnug315 Apr 25th 2008 7:28AM
Poor Blizzard. I can understand how they can't afford the disk space required to store data holding information about additional loot.
Or not.
zappo Apr 25th 2008 9:45AM
Sure, just go and try to hook up 15 hard drives up to your own computer and see how simple it is. Now swap one of those out with no slowdown or downtime while expanding capacity.
Not so easy is it? Costs are not all due to physical drives
Prauche Apr 25th 2008 1:12PM
Um, yeah, well, if I had somewhere in the neighborhood of 9 million folks paying me somewhere in the neighborhood of $10-$15 each month, I think I could find a way to add a little more storage capacity.
And, um, there is downtime just about every single Tuesday. Take the servers down for a full Tuesday and tell all your subscribers: We're increasing your bag space by 100%. I doubt you'd have very many people upset. I'd gladly give up a day of playing to fully double my in-game storage space. I wouldn't even ask to be reimbursed for a day of no-play.
borked Apr 25th 2008 4:18PM
zappo:
In an environment lke Blizzards, adding 15 drives is nothing at all like adding 15 drives to a home pc.
They buy a disk shelf from a vendor. They add it to the massive storage infastructure by adding power and connecting fibre, they turn it on, they add it to the farm and bam, it's in use, data is being stored. The whole process would take about 15 minutes from the time it was racked to the time data could be put on the drives.
Granted, thats best case, but it's nothing like adding disk to a home computer, or even a regular server. It's all in an abstracted SAN to the servers.
Chriasas Apr 25th 2008 9:11AM
My main reason for a bank alt is so that I only have to run auctioneer on one charater. It really is a resource hog.
Pook Apr 25th 2008 9:55AM
My bank and AH mule has a rather worrying 15days played at lvl2 :P
Lars Apr 25th 2008 1:42PM
Well, your adventuring level is only 2, but your auctioneer level is probably 70.
biglou Apr 25th 2008 10:17AM
bank alt is also my enchanter/disenchanter, and he is a guildmaster for a guild containing only my toons (all mats in 1 location...no logging off and on to see what mats everyone has). Also, easy distribution of money because its in the guild bank. This also makes it easy to put all lockboxes in so my rogue can open all at once, so I can DE all items at once, can tailor all sellable items at once, without having to log and mail mats from 3 different toons.
Only problem with this, I have 3 tabs that are almost filled with mats (I only sell mats in full stacks so I have tons of partial stacks) and If I get hacked im sure im pretty screwed.
Jon Park May 7th 2008 10:58PM
biglou, you took the words out of my mouth. My bank alt is also my disenchanter and a guild leader.
If you get a bank alt that is level 35, he can get his enchanting up to 275, which is high enough to disenchant any item that requires level 70. It's most likely going to cost 1000 or so gold to skill up, but it will pay off when your 70(s) are sending him several items a day. The resulting mats can be sold for a good profit or often used for high level enchants for your main.
styopa Apr 25th 2008 1:20PM
Besides the convenience advantage, think about the load-reduction on their login servers to eliminating bank alts.
I mean, when I'm grinding a tradeskill, I might bounce back and forth between various characters and my bank alt 5-6 times in 10 minutes. Each time, Blizz's servers have to do SOME validation, I'd expect, even though they are all characters on the same account.
borked Apr 25th 2008 4:17PM
I currently run 2 banks alts (down from 3).
1 I use as my day to day bank alt, where I store my commonly used/traded items (motes, etc), where I keep odd RP stuff, gear for later etc, and where I do all my AH work.
The other is my crafting bank - it's currently full of bank bags and 16 slot bags, filled with leather and cloth and ore. I used to only keep a couple stacks around, but then found myself buying things back off the AH a few days later, so I decided I'd keep an even bigger bank for mats.
My current inititive is to get mining/tailoring/lw bags for it, so Ican store even more, especially leather.
The biggest thing I'd love to see is bigger stack sizes - I have 15 stacks of most leather, I'd love to be able to narrow that down.
Lars Apr 25th 2008 1:41PM
"Why have a bank alt?"
Why do I need to answer to you? I'm not on trial here! Alright, Alright...Because I'm a fucking pack-rat, alright!?
/in my best Napolean Dynomite impression
...GAW!
Rob Apr 25th 2008 5:34PM
My wife, i think, still doesn't believe in a bank or AH alt. Bank alt saves tons of time. Perhaps the real secret hasn't been mentioned thus far. You do your dailies or quests or whatever, accumulate junk. Sell the vendor trash, send everything else to the bank alt. Keep doing this throughout the week or month. When your bank alt had all 5 bags full (or near enough), organize and sell. This saves probably an hour a week if you play a few hours a day. Sell in full stacks if at all possible. Especially for very common items such as copper or netherweave. Occassionally (ie once a month) i will have a clearance sale and just dump everything on the bank alt, and vendor what doesn't sell. If it doesnt' sell after two times, its probably not going to, might as well give it away or sell it (unless its very valuable, at that point decrease the price). Anyway the concept is only sell when your bags are completely full (or nearly so), this saves tons of time.
Calybos Apr 25th 2008 5:36PM
I guess I'll take the stand here: I don't have a "bank alt."
I have several characters, but my policy is: "If you make it, you play it." Limited storage space is part of the game, and it's not a big deal for me. I'm having more fun questing, exploring, and trying out races and classes. Worrying about bag space is low on my priority list.
Korenwolf Apr 26th 2008 2:20PM
I don't burn an alt for my banking slot, it's whichever alt is getting the least attention at the moment (currently the level 21 warrior gnome) when I decide to actually get that little monster up to 40 someone else will be ordered into Ironforge and gets to sit on a pile of "stuff" and hold the collective gold pile.