Should Blizzard allow us to deposit money in a personal bank?
by Daniel Whitcomb 
May 8th 2008 at 6:00PM
Ok, I'll be honest. I'm pretty fine with how we handle money now. Sure, back in Everquest, I needed to go deposit my money in my bank, because due to the encumbrance system, if I had kept all my platinum coins on me, I would have been glued to the spot, unable to walk. But in WoW, there's no encumbrance, and our coins take up no inventory space.
Still, I've seen a lot of people ask to be able to deposit money in the bank, so, being an equal time type of guy, I thought I'd sit back and try to figure out what the advantages would be.
As far as I can tell, there's basically two. One, it prevents you from making impulse purchases at vendors or in the Auction House, and two, if the money bank is shared between all characters on a server, it makes transferring money between characters for major purchases a little bit easier.
The first, well. I suppose the whole impulse purchasing thing can certainly be a problem, especially if you're leveling up a new alt. Sure, that level 29 "of the Monkey" cloak is up for 10 gold, but damn if it wouldn't be awesome for your Rogue. Sure, that Orb of Deception is up for 750 gold, but it lets you turn into a Gnome. How sweet is that? In that case, being able to "lock away" part of your gold and making you make a conscious decision to walk to the bank and withdraw it before you could use it could prevent those. If you don't have the gold, you don't make the purchase. If you have to go get the gold, you have an opportunity to think about it and decide if it's really worth it.
The second is also understandable enough. I recently purchased epic flight for my Hunter, and do to so I ended up logging between 3 other characters to send over enough gold so my Hunter could afford it. So in that case, being able to walk over to the bank and just grab gold my characters deposited back the last time I was actively playing them would be convenient.
That said, I'm not sure either of this reasons is really good enough to put Blizzard on programming the option. The fact is, you can already more or less simulate the idea of a bank with a bank alt. Send all your gold to them, leaving yourself only a bit to buy food, water, ammunition, reagents, and any other emergency supplies. The process of switching over to them to withdraw gold to buy something should give you the same "cool down" period for impulse purchases, and since you know all your gold is with them, you will always know exactly where to go to send your latest 70 the money to buy flying skill. I suppose it can be a pain to switch to your bank alt to get the gold, but hey, it leaves the programmers free to work on WoTLK.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Tricks, Making money, Alts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Unclekoolaid May 8th 2008 6:11PM
Yes they should, when I first started playing that's what i thought it was for, I could never figure out why you couldn't put money in the bank. Would it really be that hard to put into the game? I mean it works for guild banks already.
Ametrine May 8th 2008 6:14PM
Heck, I've heard of some people who (with the aid of friends to invite the alts) made guilds just for themselves and their alts, specifically to share money and whatnot.
Todd May 8th 2008 6:19PM
I'm currently trying to make my own guild. Need to round up a few more signatures then everyone will get the boot.
miked May 8th 2008 8:22PM
I'm one of those people! =D
It's working out great - every once in a while, my main sends money to the GM (a level 30 rogue) who deposits the money. Then all the other characters withdraw when they need it. My hunter got her mount right at 40 thanks to the guild bank =)
Christian Holton May 8th 2008 6:17PM
There was an AddOn that 'hid' a portion of your money. You could set it to sock away whatever percentage of income you made from any source. The idea is to prevent you from getting 'burning wallet' syndrome, but for those of us who can't forget that we have an AddOn that's hiding money from us, or who might be uncomfortable with that idea. Could there be a way to automate sending gold to a bank alt or an AddOn that did something like that? Could come in really handy for big purchases, such as epic flight or an epic crafting recipe.
Baluki May 8th 2008 6:56PM
Yea, that was DepositBox. I think it's still out there. I used it to get my first epic mount. It worked great.
It didn't auto-send cash to your alts though. Never heard of a mod that does that.
Kylock May 8th 2008 9:20PM
Actually with the mod savings plan you can set it to send a set percentage of your current money to an alt with a time frame you choose whenever you open a mail box.
So once per week my alt gets sent 10 percent of my main's money when I open a mailbox.
Wade May 8th 2008 6:18PM
Think it could cut down on lag maybe,, get rid of all the bank alts. Free up a character slot on that realm for you.
Ametrine May 8th 2008 8:06PM
Yes plz! When bank-alts were in heavy use, I considered myself amazingly lucky to get above 15 FPS in Org and IF.
darian May 8th 2008 6:18PM
But if people aren't impulsively buying stuff, how can I impulsively sell stuff?!?
Think of the vendors!
Perrins May 8th 2008 6:19PM
It is a good idea as in the function that all your toons can share the money in the bank, but in turn they would have to share the bank as well. I don’t see that as feasible. I have no problem with the money situation what so ever. I play a protc warrior and a BM hunter I know what my repair bills are for both on raid nights so I make sure I do dailies and quest so I can have repair money on them. I usually keep about 300g on the warrior and 150g on the hunter. All extra funds get transferred to the bank character I have. She’s basically a lvl 19 rogue I have never bothered to level at all bc I find rogues boring. But all greens blues and purplez and winnings (shards, motes, etc) get sent to her to store or AH. All the money she makes in the AH gets stored on her, so I basically have a central depository for all my stuff.
Now what my core group of friends and I have done is a little more unique. We started a lowbie guild and put our bank toons in this guild and opened 3 tabs in the guild bank. We have access to all the stuff there and share mats, motes, tomes, lowbie grinding blues we find, etc through each of us. We don’t have a minimum need of anything but its just like “hey I got x number of stacks of all color gems knock yourself out and make them into the blue gems and stick them back in the bank so we can use them” type deal. This only works for us I believe because we all have been gaming together for 4+years and fully trust each other.
Oldbear May 8th 2008 6:23PM
But then you would have to fly back to a major city just to get the coin for repairs or such...
Oldbear May 8th 2008 6:26PM
My bank loves the impulse buyer... current 90% of the way for my epic land mount, just selling to people with to much money.
niclaw May 8th 2008 7:54PM
as someone who's been hacked several times, I was thinking of a password or safety possibility on the bank. that would save a lot of time and money for a lot of people
Aigarius May 8th 2008 6:34PM
Useless idea. People that are dumb enough to buy things on an impulse deserve to face the consequences. Just make a bank alt, you should have one anyway.
Mir May 9th 2008 2:08AM
Me and some friends keep a guild for our bank alts, throwing free-for-all junk in the guild bank for alt levelling and keeping a 3000g "money buffer" for large purchases (which is usually paid back as soon as possible).
Cremean May 8th 2008 6:35PM
If there is interest involved in putting money in the bank, I'll sign that one.
Blake May 8th 2008 7:21PM
Yeah, this was the only possible reason I could see people wanting to deposit money in a bank.
Impulse purchases? Puh-leeze.
Shared between alts would be nice, but it's not hard to send money or items now as they now instantly arrive when you send them.
Interest would be nice. Might also be a nice learning experience for the young ones playing the game. Teach them to save and earn interest on the money in the bank. Keep the interest rate in line with the national average and you could try to impart some savings wisdom. With America's reliance on credit, maybe even the older players could learn a thing or two...
Finnicks May 8th 2008 6:36PM
I don't like this idea. Even if, as you suggested, a shared money bank between all your characters were to be established, you'd still have to return to a bank to get money, which defeats the purpose of the bankalt.
I prefer to be able to transfer gold from my bankalt to my main and grab it from the nearest mailbox, thanks.
Manatank May 8th 2008 6:43PM
Any change to the game that makes things less convenient should be opposed strongly. This is just a terrible, terrible idea. If you have a problem with self control, fix it with an add-on.
I would strongly support the idea of shared money between all toons on the same account.