We are very close knit group in my guild, and so we tend to be a bit generous. A bit too generous even!

We tend to stick in the bank whatever we dont need, and any extras of everything, from tradeskill mats we dont need anymore, to potions, to tons of cut jems!

Unfortunately, more people donate than take out, so we have to have someone almost daily go through the stuf and sell whatever has been there too long, or is not useful to anyone.

Even then its usually filled to the brim. And all the gold made in the AH goes to buying more tabs, repairs, and other usefull stuff.

We seem to be definetly more in tune with Communisum when it comes to our guild bank.

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My guild was forced to scale back access to the guild bank because of problems with hackers stealing our members' accounts and coming in and cleaning out the bank. So now we do have limits on daily withdrawals.

That said, I think that because guilds are a "smaller collective," assuming you all trust each other well enough, you can work well.

Our guild doesn't make any major rules besides "put stuff in the proper bank tab," and we seem to do just fine.

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My guild started out as a friend-based guild and even now we are very strict on who gets to join. Therefore also our guild bank is open for everyone (except the less-than-a-week-old who are still on trial) on four tabs and the fifth is only for officers, who may distribute things it contains for people who need them for major upgrades. We have there mats for couple mongooses, some rare gems, primals, rare recipes etc. Since most of our officers are no longer in need of much money we have steady influx of even valuable stuff. We also have some big donators in our guild, who put in stuff almost every day. There is, ofcourse, people who give less, but usually they are lower level characters with less to give.

We usually have a little spring cleaning every now and then, and I as "guild bank officer" try to keep it well organized. Every tab has a theme after which people should place their donations - mostly just to save my time. Tab 2 for example contains alchemy and cooking related material and recipes, tab 3 instead JC, BS and engineering stuff.

People tend to do very little withdrawing, so we've had to sell a lot of stuff and I put extra stuff often to AH. Ofc, the money goes to the bank. I think our system works relatively well and we've only had slight misusage that we've managed to talk people out of. And we wouldn't manage without the bank anymore, no one would have the space for that stuff anymore xD

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It is interesting - But I think the problem could be the fact that a fairly pure capitalist economy permeates the rest of the game - supply is limitless, limited only by the amount of labor put into the game, while demand is ever growing. People buy things that they want, but no one really needs to buy anything - your character isn't going to die if they don't win that auction. Most of all, there's no way to steal in this game - if you ninja something, everyone can see that you did it. This game works the way that classical capitalist theorists wish the real world worked. The guild bank is the first exchange system that both seems anonymous and doesn't work off classical capitalist principles. I'm going to enjoy watching how it plays out.

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We first started out as a guild of friends with tons of alts but recently we let quite a lot random lowbies and new players join our guild which has led to some problems with the guild bank structure we have.

One day I checked the guild bank log and I found out that a level 19 warrior had withdrawn some Thorium Brotherhood reputation items and a few high class enchanting items. So i decided to have a chat with him about it.

We discovered he had put them on the auction house with the same toon he used for the withdrawal. When i confronted him with the information he said that a friend of him had played on his account that day.

The major problem was that he got promoted to a rank where he could withdraw 5 stacks per day which obviously was high enough to get some valueable stuff in good amount. He asked for a promotion to withdraw some deviate scales which we tought was fine.

No matter how you set up the guildbank it all comes down to trust in the end. Unfortunately you never know what the other player is really like. He could just be playing with you to get access to the stuff you have in the bank.

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in our guild we only let officers withdraw from the bank, and because of the guildbank and it's security in mind when selecting people to be officers. Sometimes people do share accounts with friends and family members, we won't choose someone as an officer if they account share. That eliminates that excuse (oh I didn't do that, my friend did)

Also on the last tab only officers can even see whats there, thats usually where we keep boe epics and higly valuable items. We generally offer these things up for rolling after a raid, and don't want people asking for them before we offer them to the guild. This mostly stemed from the very first day of the guild banks coming out and soon as we started putting stuff in and people could see it, it was a frenzy of people (mostly newer people to the guild) asking for expensive items. LoL like we are gonna hand a 1000g+ pattern to someone who joined the guild 3 days ago, I was shocked at some of the people who even asked..

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Newcomers can't access our bank tab until they have made it through the "probation" period. Then, members in good standing can access half of the tabs. We're currently saving for that 2500g tab. Everyone knows what that tab costs and we've had a lot of good suggestions for how to use it. Officers access the other half of the tabs where high end stuff is placed. I have a bank officer who announces the bank culls and AH's or vendors anything deemed not usable or on the tab too long. Members are very generous with donations and we have to frequently cull materials.
We have had no problems with people taking stuff to sell, but that is probably due to our restrictions on what tabs are open to all and frequent bank maintenance. Officers are encouraged to be familiar with what's in the bank, even if you don't do anything other than stick stuff in. We also encourage a "like for like" removal/donation policy which seems to work well.
The one thing we'd like to see is a date stamp on items. When you moused over an item it would read, "Sunfury Signets, 5-24, 5-29, 6-5". That would help us know whether that axe we see was donated yesterday or back in March.

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@Gimmlette

I think a better suggestion would be either an Addon or Blizz implimenting a graphical way to see withdrawls vs. donations per guild member.

I understand there is a log on what is going in and out of the bank, but a better way to quantify and display that would be invaluable and help solve most current problems with bank usage. I know it would help out the GM and officers when cracking down on misusage.

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Good article Amanda, loved how you pushed the enveloppe with philosophy.

Anyway, in my guild, only the Guild master and the officers have access to the guild bank, they say: "If you need extra storage either buy more bank slots or make a mule" though to compensate, they actually pay for everyone's repairs and craft the raiding necessities.

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I ninjad my own guild bank because my guild had grown incompetent and I was sick of no progression. Moved servers, started over and finished the game.

I didn't /gdisband though, I /gleader and even left quite a bit of stuff for the fools.

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The better system I've seen so far with a friend's guild is that there are specified personnel on a team, all specialized in what they do (e.g Potion, Elixir and Flask masters) in the guild. For the guild bank: every member who has been initiated into the Raiders core pays 25g a week into the coffers, in exchange for being granted a set supply of consumables per raid. They raid only 3 times a week due to scheduling so each member is granted a flask or 3xGuardian 3xBattle Elixirs, one stack of each potion and food consumables according to class/spec/raid purpose respectively.

Even though you are granted these as rule once your payment is made each week (you can also pay in advance for the month-which is advised as well), you are required to still supplement these supplies with your own. The golden rule is no begging for consumables, especially if advance notice of the raid was given and you saw it, was on at the time and STILL didn't go out and farm/buy/exchange for your supplies.

All materials contirubted tothe bank are on a DKP/discount rate and are applied as necessary. I.e. you farm mats for the pots/elixirs/flasks - your payment for X amount of weeks is waived according to how much you contribute.

In terms of resist gear, marks, armaments and whatnot: it's up to players to contribute. If someone wishes to have any of these...er...'junk' items as such - you're offered it at a discounted guild price (which is usually substantially lower than AH anyway) and all proceeds go straight to the guild coffers once again.

In terms of enchanting/crafting: once you supply your own mats or are a KEY raider E.g. the Krosh Mage Tank, the guild MT and OT or as it applies to you whatever class and rank you are: no fees are charged but you are required to supply your own mats if you're NOT a raider but if you are a raider and have a good standing with the loot council, it's mostly free with respect to the circumstances. I.e. if the gear/enchant is a definite upgrade and is NEEDED.

If you don't have it: do without it and if you fail your role in the raid - you are penalized as necessary. So far the system has worked for him very well since everything is recorded by the loot council via spreadsheet and seems to be well organized.

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The following does not answer the question put forth by the blogger, but it does address the communist references in the article. These rules are not my wishes for a guild system, but what I believe Blizzard must do, if they wanted to make the guild bank system a complete success.

Blizzard must, start all players off in a guild. They would be called Newbie Guild A, Newbie Guild B, etc...

Characters can transfer guilds, but you can never be guildless.

All items, when looted, go to the guild inventory. The guild inventory, would be the size of all current player inventory/banks.

Players would have no individualized inventory slots. They would only have their gear slots, which only allows them to keep items until replaced, then those old items would go to the guild bank.

To clear the guild inventory, players would move items they felt should be sold, to either an NPC vendor section or an AH vendor section.

When more than 50% of players have put an item into the NPC vendor section, that item is automatically vendored.

When more than 25% of players put an item into the AH vendor section, that item is automatically put on the AH, using the average price the members of the guild decided upon, when they moved those items to the AH section of the guild inventory.

There are many, many more rules to put in place, such as how to handle crafting items, guild hoppers, special events such as opening AQ gates, etc.

This is a radical departure from the way the game currently handles player inventories. I don't think many players from Western societies would be happy with a communal inventory section.

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This commy stuff doesn't work because inevitably, a guild roster will be bloated with leeches, kind of like welfare recipients. These people are content to do nothing and still get what they "need". There is no incentive for people who are willing to work hard to do so, as the fruit of their labor would be only what someone else has decided they "need." So, as history has shown, communism is the prefered economic system for worthless slacker-leeches, and the bane of those who are willing to achieve. A society will not prosper under this in the real world and a guild will fail with this attitude in WoW.

Those who contribute should be able to take from the bank. Those who do not should have no access to it and preferably should be removed from the guild.

Just my opinion.

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We have two tabs for consumable, trade, and gear items, one for lower lv players, one for higher, that allows up to 5 withdrawals per day (depending on rank). We also have one tab for raids with potions and such that only officers and the highest non-officer rank can withdraw from (all are on the raiding team) and one tab for high lv, epic or expensive items that only officers and above can withdraw from. All guild members can see these tabs and may ask for an item if needed.
We ask all guildies who withdraw an item to make a donation, and also loans are available for higher ranked members if two officers agree. Lowest rank (trial rank) may not withdraw at all.
We also keep an eye on withdrawals and the AH to make sure people do not withdraw and sell. This happened alot at first, but once everyone realised that we wouldn't tolerate being cheated (we had to kick one or two people) this has stopped.
Many of the members also donate money frequently of their own accord.
This method works well for us. Everyone gets what they need for their own use and the bank has a steady supply of money.

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Note: Re-read the OP on the forums. Doesn't sound to me like they're looking for a more balanced way to utilize the guild banks. Sounds more like they view anyone who would ever withdraw from the guild bank as a freeloader and anyone who donates to the guild bank as a Pollyanna.


My reply on the forum reflected my basic sense of, well, morality. If I can't make immediate use of something, I donate it to the guild bank. So Primal Mana (dear lord I have loads of that) gets put into the bank. But I keep my Primal Life, because I use that to make Mooncloth.

Basically, I'm at a point in the game where an extra 50g here or there doesn't matter to me. I have my epic flyer, my professions are maxed, with enough materials and gold stashed away in case I want to swap profs and powerlevel. I have enough gems and enchanting mats in my bank to re-enchant and re-gem every gear slot twice over, and a spare chunk of gold to cover repairs for a couple weeks if I forget to do dailies. So the question of what to do with a stack of Adamantite Ore is easy to answer: donate it to the guild.

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This are the biggest walls I have seen in some time around here :P There can only be 2 kinds of bank, between friends where every one can access everything (event then you can only trust people so far) and very limited access (I guess officers) in any other circumstances. Any thing ales is just asking for trouble. In friends guild people don’t care who takes what but they would give that to them anyway if friends ask. The other kind have officers (a very limited amount, our guild of 120 have 5 or 6 I think) control distribution of everything. Guild Bank is not a dump for “unwanted” item, its usually used for rare patters, raid consumables and gems. We are T6 guild getting in SWP, we only using 4 tabs and they are never full and they provide enough space to accommodate all the activities.

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