How I run our guild bank
Lath from HoTs & DoTs is compiling info on how guilds make their money (and how they spend it).
Here’s how we run ours.
Making money
We sit around the 70,000 mark; I don’t like to fall below 50,000.
We charge 100g for all offspec items (main spec items are on EPGP). This is a small “trickle” income.
We also auction off all BOE epics within the guild – again, offspec or alt – you can’t buy main spec gear with gold and cheat the EPGP system. The items must be for your character/s, not to sell for a profit.
This is a fairly new tactic, because our gold was dipping low and I wanted to bump it back up again.
All BOE epics are in full view of all members; they then send me a minimum and maximum bid through the mail. The minimum bid is approximately half the normal AH price. If there’s not much interest, or if there are tied bids, I usually post on the forums to drum up some interest or get people re-bidding.
On Tuesday, the bank is cleared “old” BOEs; the BOEs that have been won are held in my bags until I get payment for them; the leftovers are sent to my bank alt to AH at full price.
This way, guildies get super bargain BOEs (someone got a Wodin’s neck for 5k – they are selling for 13k), and the bank still gets a nice income. The guild gets plenty of time to put their hand up for epics, and if nobody is interested – I can still sell for a good price on the AH.
Patterns are usually offered for free, and I just sell off any surplus.
I also sell anything that we have in surplus – eg we always seem to have thousands of Infinite Dust.
Spending money
Repairs are open to everyone, trials and alts included. Nobody ever has to worry about repair bills.
Feasts are provided (although guildies often donate these, so the bank doesn’t always pay).
Enchant mats, gems etc are half price.
Flasks can be purchased if there are none on the AH, but nobody relies on them.
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My name is Emma and I live in Australia. I’ve been gaming on and off since I was about 11. I won’t tell you exactly how long ago that was, let’s just say long enough.
about 1 year ago
What on earth do you need 50,000 for in a guild bank? I can barely see what you’d need 5,000 for…
Please enlighten me.
about 1 year ago
With repairs open to everyone, and some nights a little heavier on the wipes than others, a healthy balance means that I don’t have to spend too much time playing the AH on behalf of the guild. It can rise and fall without me having to worry about it falling low.
And there are occasions where I might buy bulk fish, flasks, gems, etc.
50k is just the magic number for me. We could probably get by with 15-20, but I feel much more comfortable with 50.
about 1 year ago
Cool so you guys sound pretty similar to our guild
Do you let people get BOEs for EPGP or only via selling them?
We have just under 200k atm and I’m still worried we wont have enough… I just have a feeling in Cataclysm some of the guild wide rewards are going to involve large sums of money and I want us to be prepared!
@Christian – when you give away repairs and flasks etc it costs approximately 15000g a week to run a guild with about 30 raiders and alts!
Lath´s last blog ..The Guild Bank: How Does Your Guild Make Money?
about 1 year ago
BOEs for main character, main spec, are EPGP. Eg I got my Marrowgar’s Frigid Eye on EPGP; but if there was one in the bank, an alt or offspec could buy it at auction.
A few cheeky people have tried the “can I get that for 100g offspec” on me..
But most understand that it’s not just about helping the guild to gear up, but also to keep a bit of money in the bank. I have heard of other guilds that sell ALL of their BOEs, and never give them out, even with DKP/EPGP etc.. which seems slightly counter productive. We always gear our mains up first, but keeping the guild in repairs and feasts is more important to us than giving BOEs to alts.
To be honest I have been pleasantly surprised that it hasn’t cost as much as I thought for repairs – and I keep them open for everyone in the guild, alts included. We raid a little less than other 25man guilds, but even so, we still stick around the 50k mark even on progression weeks.
We don’t supply flasks on a regular basis, though, so that makes a difference.
about 1 year ago
I like the idea of having a small cost associated with gearing up an offspec.
Although I don’t think we could implement anything like that unless we needed to raise gold quickly. Unfortunately our members don’t think getting an item selling for 13k on the AH is a bargain if they pay 5k. They think it should be free, or treated no differently than the BoP gear.
Frankly, if you auction off BoE gear the same way you auction off BoP gear than you’re losing an opportunity and that definitely has a cost in the long run.
I think it’s more that raiders have a “set point” – an amount that they think the guild should have in reserve, and then beyond that they want everything free of cost. Of course, everyone’s “set point” is a totally different value. Perhaps if we started having to cut back due to lack of funds our raiders would take our gold making efforts more seriously than they do now.
Cassandri´s last blog ..The Guild Bank: How Does Your Guild Make Money?
about 1 year ago
Thanks for posting this! As a guild leader I’m always interested to see how other guilds run things. I’ve been interested for a while in making repairs open to our raiders but I’m wondering what kind of weekly gold turnover you have to sustain this? This would of course depend on the number of raiders you have and the amount that you raid but it would be interesting to get some idea of what would be needed. Lath suggested 15,000g per week for about 30 people… Just curious if this is about the same for you?
about 1 year ago
I don’t use our guild bank much so I don’t really know all the rules, but we let main raiders pay DKP for BOEs and otherwise put them on the AH, the guild bank only pays for repairs during progression, and I believe raiders can get their new gear enchanted with guild bank mats, but if so I never use that. The guild also turns the greens into enchanting mats for the gbank during 25 mans.
I’ve still never really seen what the point of all this is though. I mean you can pay for people’s repairs and keep the enchanting mats from runs, or you could just set the loot threshold to epic and let people pick up stuff on their own and pay their own repairs and do their own enchants.
The only reason I can see is that is splits it up more evenly, say if a BOE epic drops and one person wants it for their alt but someone else has no alts and just wants the gold. But the enchanting mats thing is bizarre to me.
about 1 year ago
First, lols at WoW.com resurrecting an old post. >_>
Second, the response itself.
I like a lot of this. We tend to sit around the 20k mark at the moment, but raiders are the only ones who get repairs as well, not that most use them. We also tend to sell off BoEs at about half AH price – that always seemed about the right margin – but I hadn’t thought of doing a silent auction for it. I’m not sure I could convince the guild to pay the 100g for offspec items – especially as we still run [mostly] a roll modified suicide kings loot system due to regularly collecting pugs to fill 25man raids. Everything else is mostly free to raiders, and most of them find their own anywa. /shrug
I do have to ask though, how much time [per week?] do you spend on the guild bank keeping this all running?