Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Guild Bank Maintenance


As an officer and long time member of the guild, I manage alot of the gbank transactions. I'm curious as to how most guilds maintain their gbanks. Every so often I will go in and clear out some old mats or gear and sell them, placing the gold back in the bank. I will distribute among regular guildies any excessive pots, scrolls, flasks and food etc. We use our gold for guild events and sometimes to help out a guild tank that has been doing alot of runs for the guild.

I try to deter folks from putting old mats in the gbank as they just take up too much room. It is absolutely much easier to organize the glyphs now with the colours and patterns for classes. It was a nightmare for a while.

I was just reading a post about a guild that has one tab as a free for all for guildies which I think is a great idea. Placing things that have been in the guild bank for a while or just old stuff. Putting a limit of 3 items per day to be removed. It can be hard to keep the balance of items at times and having a free for all tab may help.

Perhaps it's just our guild but it seems people hate to ask for anything from the gbank hehehe. When gbanks started I was thinking there were going to be issues with some people trying to take advantage etc, but its been the opposite. People hate to ask and hate to take stuff. Hopefully with a free tab guildies will be more likely to dip in.

4 comments:

  1. I am the primary manager for our guild bank. It's definitely a lot of work to maintain, but we've gotten really good positive reponse and feed back from the guild so what we've got works for us.

    Our set up is Tab 1: Deposits only, Tab 2: General Use, Tab 3: Enchant/Enhancement Mats, Tab 4: Raid Consumables, Tab 5: Senior Officer only, Tab 6: Consumable mats.

    Tab 1 is self explantory. Tab 2 is withdrawls for general use for guildies. New members to guild gain access to withdraw via promotion after their first week. This is for stuff that can be used to level people's toons or professions. It also holds things like achievement related items (the "mood" food for example) and other things when they are seasonal like for world events and what not.

    Tab 3 holds enchanting mats or other enhancement items like spellthread or leg armor and also raw gems. We keep it to mats mainly used for end game raiding so no dream dust or low level JC gems. As a guild, we do help guildies with enchant mats and provide gems for gear. The very expensive enchants we reserve for epic gear only and that gear which will not likely be replaced too soon. Gems are much easier to come by, so we generally provide gems as needed. Officers maintain withdrawl access here to make sure we don't tap out the gb and are using the mats smartly.

    Tab 4 holds all raid consumables: feasts, limited buff foods, health/mana pots, potions & injectors, elixirs, and of course, flasks. This tab has limited withdrawl access by junior officers and main access lies with the officers. Tab 5 is for senior officer's only to view/deposit and withdrawls are even more limited. There we keep back up high level enchant mats, BoE Epics, and high level crafting mats for things like FR Gear or Eternal Belt buckles, etc. Everyone has deposit access to Tab 6 because it holds mats for flasks, fish feasts, etc. A few times a week I get with our alchemist and cooks to translate those mats to flasks, potions, feasts etc. I usually try to get guildies that will be able to gain skill points so that we can help them as well.

    As a guild, we try to be and I think we are fairly generous. Aside from enchants & gems, we also provide feasts, potions, & flasks during raids. Our members have been great about making sure we have enough mats to make what we need happen both for enchants and consumables. As a casual raiding guild, it helps people who can't play for hours each day. It's really about teamwork. And as a note, our guildies aren't lazy because we do this. Many of them do take care of their own flasks and enchants. But when they haven't had time to play to farm mats etc, it's nice to be able to help them out when they need it!

    The other thing that we do allow from the guild bank is that we offer certain ranks the limited ability to charge their withdrawls to the guild bank. That raised an eyebrow with me when we first did it b/c no other guild I'd been in before allowed it. The ranks that do have access understand that it's to be used for guild runs only, not just for everday general repair. We've not had a problem with anyone abusing the privledge. It sounds like we would run the guild bank low, but many people deposit gold themselves, we do a weekly lottery of which half the ticket sales go to the gb, and some people that can't farm mats for flasks also deposit gold into the bank as a way of returning the favor or however you want to say it. We also use the gold in the guild bank for prize money during our guild contests as well.

    We've (knock on wood) been fortunate to have active members that keep a good rotation of stock into the guild bank and not had anyone take advantage of their access. I've definitely heard some horror stories about guild banks, and with our tiered access we've got a bank usable by all guild members but limited enough to maintain guild assets.

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  2. Bah! The second to last paragraph should read "...charge their repairs to the guild bank." not charge their withdrawls.

    And. . .sorry for how long that was!! I didn't realize it until after I posted :(

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  3. Firstly, OMG thank you for that post. It was brilliant. I'm not sure we are big enough to implement a process as you noted but absoultely an awesome system.

    I think if our numbers increase and our raiding increases, a bank system as yours would be great.

    For now I just want folks to feel comfortable to remove stuff and by having an open tab hopefully they will.

    I'll definately be referring to your post again as I think you guys have it nailed.

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  4. Wow! Quite the wall of text! ...but, GREAT stuff. Many amazing ideas in there, Eury. Thank you for taking the time to write it all out. I'm sure our guild will benefit from your experience (eg. "...few times a week I get with our alchemist and cooks to translate those mats to flasks, potions, feasts etc. I usually try to get guildies that will be able to gain skill points so that we can help them as well.")

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