f13.net

So, as was mentioned in a few other threads, I'm part of a fairly hardcore raiding guild. That is, specifically, that we come together 3-4 nights a week and run all the current instances. Like many guilds do, we actually split off of a sister guild focus more on performance-based raiding instead of a friendly get-together. I'm being kind here. This isn't a new idea; most of the better players left and we formed our own guild. With blackjack. And hookers.

Things are still getting worked out and while we're running raids (we run naxx/malygos/sarth 10/25) and doing heavy recruiting, a lot of our 'guild rules' are still being worked out. DKP, bank, that kind of thing. I'm pretty much taking lead on the guild bank - managing the bank itself, our finances, determining cash flow in, and making calls on guild services based on said cashflow.

So, I'm curious as to how some of you other people do it. I'm looking for information specifically from dedicated raiding guilds, those with 20 or more members who come together to primarily do instances on a regular basis. There are a few questions I have, so I'll number them for easy replies.

1. What services does your guild offer it's members? (free repairs, enchants, food, pots, flasks?)
2. To offer these services, what is your guild's source of income? (selling shards? mats-for-dkp? donation reliance?)
3. How is your guild bank laid out? (In terms of access and use, by tabs)
4. What is generally in your guild bank? How much work/effort is involved to keep it all running and stocked? One man job? Two?
5. How much 'liquid' cash do you generally keep in the bank? What is considered a good 'minimum' amount?
6. I noticed the info tab is only 255 characters. Do you use this for anything?
7. Have you ever had to audit people? Has anyone ever stolen from you? Are there any automated tools or addons that are useful for managing the bank?
8. Anything else I haven't mentioned in this list that I might want to know or watch out for?

We have 3 tabs and can buy a 4th if needed. Currently, the planned bank:

Tab 1: free-for-all, take a penny/leave a penny type stuff. Everyone has take access and can take anything in the tab for personal gain. Taking and selling on AH is prohibited but everything else is fair game.
Tab 2: Tradegood/enchanting materials or other things that are donated directly to the guild for specific use. Enchanting materials, heavy borean leather, cut gems, things that will help individuals but may require approval to take. Everyone has take access, but only should take by request or by rules. I figure with auditing and limiting to 2 stacks/day if someone does steal they're quickly found and damage is quite minimal. I don't want a 'request' overhead to put on one of the guild offers and I sure as hell don't want to do it.
Tab 3: Valuable goods, officer/leader take only. Abyss crystals, frozen orbs, BoE epics, valuable items to be doled out or sold on the AH for personal profit.

I don't have a good idea of our cashflow, but we're looking to offer the standard stuff - free enchants, free food, possibly if the cashflow is good enough free repairs on new content raiding and best case free flasks.

I did mats for DKP, and locked the vault down (I've heard far too many raid guild horror stories about apps getting accepted and vaults getting looted on the way out)

Sell mats that aren't needed to fund repairs. Also flasks for DKP and such to keep the guild stocked.

Open vaults with bans on personal AH sales of said goods can't really work. It's an untraceable honor system. I take item, mail to my AH alt, sell item. As long as I'm not stupid enough to do this constantly or let people know who my AH alt is, you're never finding out. So it depends how much you know your members and trust them all.

What's the advantage of a guild bank in this system exactly? It always seems like that hassle that's eventually stolen after a breakup from all the stories I hear.

We sell off all blues and BOE epics we find on raids that don't get picked-up and used right there. (Must equip if you're taking a BOE. If you don't you're booted.)  That money goes into the guild bank as repair funds. Repairs are turned-on only for raid times (which means having someone toggle it on for the appropriate ranks during raids and off when the raid's over.)   Anything that gets DE'd also gets the crystals sold off or used to do guild enchants.  We also have folks who willingly donate on a regular basis.  These folks we generally give mats/ items to with no question since they're obviously in it for the guild and not themselves.

We set-up tabs to be usable by officers for hard to get stuff and by anyone for everyday crafting mats, items or food.  People drop things off or pick them up as they want, with a maximum of 4 withdrawals per day.  Since it's all logged you can see if someone's taking advantage and dump 'em.  Depending on the size of the guild it can get pretty full pretty quickly.. particularly as people finish maxing professions or reputations and no longer have use for things they continue to pick up during dailies.  It fills up even quicker if you don't allow alts to withdraw, since that's what most folks take mats for.

I've never had to audit people, but I haven't been in a guild big enough to worry about it since guild banks were introduced.  (Largest so far has been 60 regulars)  It's still advisable to keep an eye on it as you go along.

We use guild info to put the website and vent information.

No idea on the max liquid cash you should keep, but we keep a few grand in there. Yeah, some asshat with unfettered access can run off with it all and everything they can take out of the bank. However, at the point things like that happen you know the guild's been going downhill for a while or you fucked up and made an obvious selfish idiot an Officer or something similar.  Hell, I've been in a "lockdown" guild like Kil's talking about and it was the GL who turned into the asshat and took everything then transferred servers.

A convenient way to store and trade low-to-medium value items between guild's characters and a easy way to disseminate guild-given items (free food, in our case). With withdrawls locked to 2 or so per day, the most someone is going to get away with is a few hundred gold worth of items before they're noticed. I liken it to being approximate to a epic stealing ninja-hearther.

I see. I just figured with the new Fish Feasts and flasks that most of the stuff was pretty simplified. We just run with one person who does the fishes and takes donations, and everyone is responsible for doing a couple of dailies to pick up a flask.

EDIT: Oh and we EL shards to those who got nada.

For a lot of people fish feasts aren't necessarily the ideal buff food so it still pays off to have a lot of hit food around etc.

Oh certainly, but aside from needing more hit, I think they get pretty close. I guess the hardcore would be more obsessed with ideal matching of food buffs, but I've seen very little point given the current challenge and whatnot. It is an interesting idea to collect the cash, and I've always wondered (not knowing the benefits firsthand) if those benefits outweighed the potential hassles.

Centralizing money off of "so and so's bank alt" (who could have made off with the money/ items) and subsidizing repair costs for raids are the two biggest benefits of a guild bank.   The rest is just a matter of how much you feel like socializing your guild and/ or providing a general dumpster for things you don't want to pass out individually. 

I used to make mana injectors for my guild in BC.  It was a pain in the ass hunting people down individually or mailing them out to individuals.  Even then, you'd wind up with someone last minute who would ask.  So instead, I'd reverted to taking pots from the guild bank and throwing the injectors in there.  The Alchemists had it even worse with all the flasks, pots and elixirs they were making.

 Of course, things change and neither is needed even 1/5 as much as they were then.

I backed away from guild logistics just as the guild bank feature was taking off but had my hands in most of this stuff for a couple of years.  The first and most important thing is to not make more work for yourself then absolutely needed.   Our income tended to just be BoEs, shards, and raid mats that go into resist gear.  Resist gear is pretty much dead now so that's one less headache.  That's not a lot of income but our spending was small too.

Do you really want to collect a bunch of raw materials and manage how this is processed and distributed to members?  The last thing I ever wanted to do was be a babysitter so if you get everyone used to paying out of pocket for repairs/enchants/whatever it's a lot easier.  With the state of daily quests I can't imagine this being an issue.  The petty cash then just gets used for situations where one or two members have a much larger burden then the rest.  This was typically the tanks, but could be anyone depending on zone.  You can also pony up for raid-wide flasks on progression nights and know that everyone is using them.

Guild bank for items works best with the take-a-penny approach mentioned earlier.  For profession stuff just make sure everyone knows who can make what and let them manage it themselves.

I'd also avoid any possible gold-to-DKP conversion avenues.  They are headaches.

Having been a raid/guild leader in EQ2 for a number of years, a couple of things always cause headaches...

* Never mix dkp and gold.  No buying loot for gold, etc.  No DKP/gold trade at all
* Alts and loots... just a major cause of trouble.
* Never allow people to sell DKP gear.  It was instaboot for us if someone did that.  I think most WoW stuff is BoP so not really possible anyway.
* People will play the system.  Whatever you set as your rules, look for holes.  If you allow bidding, then be aware players will collude. 
* We put a 20g per day withdrawal on a guild tab for repairs.  We found a couple of people took the 20g every day even on non-raid days.  /sigh

People will exploit every system you put in place.  Just easier to make sure they cant with any mechanics the game provides.

Guilds I was in that had a guild bank that functioned well (raiding wise) did not have much "freely accessible", but they did provide enchant mats (and in BC epic gems) for gear you got in raids that was going to be your primary gear. They would sell off BoE epics on the AH or w/e and then use the funds to buy herbs for making flasks which the Raid leader would sell for a modest price. (in TBC we could buy the tokens for shatt flasks for like 10g).

Occasionally they would turn on guildbank repairs on shitty progression stuff, but most times not.

It worked ok.

Guild before (which was effectively the same guild but with the original, better, leadership) actually supplied resist pots to the guild at no charge for AQ/Naxx etc. at level 60. I always was against the idea of supplying people who had the means to get stuff themselves shit like resist pots for free as I brought my own supplies, but that was not my call. I was part of the Gravemoss patrol for Loatheb though....ugh. 120 of the absolutely most expensive materialwise potions in the game per boss attempt was just  :awesome_for_real:

Having been an officer in a raiding guild, and now just a member, ill try to answer some of these.

Enchanting materials from DEing items in raid. Thats about it. There is food in the bank, mostly donated by members that is free for all, just dont abuse it. Same with potions, and some flask materials. Generally that stuff is member donated.

A lot of the guild money comes from selling BOE items that drop in 25 man Nax. In BC we sold gems and BOEs from hyjal and black temple.

5 Tabs. Officer, Potions, Food, Tradeskills, Misc.

Usually its run by all the officers and donations by the members. Not being an officer any more, im not sure how they run it now. Usually there is one person who is more "bank" oriented and he does the majority of the work.

Really it depends, but since we don't spend to much of it, we are just accruing gold. 20,000 is a nice number. *shrug*

Nope.

When the last guild sort of broke up and formed this new one, one of the officers opened the bank to everyone saying take what you need since your raiding earned it. One member basically jumped in there and grabbed every single thing that was worth anything.

There are scammers running around pretending to be alts of officers. Then when invited they steal the bank. Don't promote any alt to a rank with bank access unless that member has told you on his name the name of his alt and that he needs an invite.

Oh yeah, I wanted to add that DKP is a horrible system, its just more rules and stuff. I personally will never be in a guild that uses DKP ever again. I find loot council is by FAR the best way to do loot, as long as the officers are pretty good about it. There is also a mod you can get, I think its called loot tracker, that tells you all the loot you have given out, so its easy to see who got what when. In loot council several things factor in to loot decisions. Attendance, skill, how much of an upgrade is it, and when the players last got loot.
The system can take a little longer to decide loot, but overall, its a very good system. I have used it in the last two guilds, and its great. If moving to loot council you need your members to trust that the officers know who to give loot to for the betterment of the guild.

My main GB logistics problem is stopping people dumping all the worthless crap they don't want in the GB.

Vendor it then. Problem solved.

1) Free repairs, free void crystals, flasks/pots only if they differ from the standard fare (e.g. elemental damage absorb pots)
2) Donation reliance from the core officers/members. The guild has been running for a long time though, so hardly any donations are really necessary anymore
3) All tabs are viewable by everyone (as well as deposit priveleges), initiates have no withdrawals, core members have withdrawals on low-impact things (old world mats, glyphs) and limited withdrawal on potions/food/flasks/elixirs. Officers and guild leader have complete freedom of access.
4) Most people are self-reliant, it is only there as an emergency stockpile but since people hardly take things out stuff can stockpile. Officers can organize the bank but anyone can deposit.
5) The bank is up to around 45,000 gold but that's been accumulated over years of donations

I don't know much about the rest. I find free repairs/voids keep everyone happy enough that we're all fine to deposit a few extra crystallized fires or shoveltusk steaks. I think it's important to use the guild bank as an emergency stockpile. Nobody should be relying on it to supply them with everything, and people need to be willing to give as well as take. I also think free repairs are an awesome thing to have. If you can't afford 30-40 people repairing 60g a day then set the amount of free repair a little lower (20g free of repairs today) until you have enough capital established in the bank to bump it up to 60-80g per day per member. Voids are easy enough to get once people stop finding upgrades.

Except really the only decent raid food is bop anyway.

We tend to go with a "Be cool, yo" policy on the guild bank, along with just about everything else. As far as the guild bank specifically goes:

It is mostly funded by donations, although we also throw void crystals in when they are grabbed. some place around the 2-3 month mark of progression we end up running stuff for mostly 1-2 items, and almost all of it gets sharded. In January, the core group was running heroics, dumping about 10 shards a week into the bank from the epics we didn't want. As for Naxx, we're hitting that point now, with 3-4 shards a week coming in. Its enough to keep a decent amount in the bank (1-2kg, with a good stockpile of mats for various things).

As far as withdrawals, you get one stack from the "cheap" tab, which generally has pots and food and stuff. The other tabs are managed by guild officers, and anyone can buy the items in there for 1/2 AH values.

Everything seems to work fine as long as the "Chill the fuck out" clause to every guild policy is observed.

If someone's been away for a while, watch out when they log back in and give slightly evasive or generic replies to greetings, that's all I can say.

My only suggestion is to not have cut gems wasting space in your vault unless you know people will be taking them CONSTANTLY. They don't stack and take up a lot of space really quickly. Have the raw gems sit in there instead, to be cut as needed.

Thanks guys, I'll let you know how it goes.

Well, now that my guidleader decided to kick all of the raiders out of our guild except me and one other person, we don't raid anymore.  But when we did... you were responsible for everything.  Repairs, flasks, gearing yourself up, etc.  The guild bank is something that you can deposit into, but only the GM had any access to - so nothing ever truly "good" was put in.

A group used to run themselves to gear up since no one else wanted to.  Our guild leader felt we were excluding too many people and it was unfair, so she issues a "these 5 are no longer allowed to run together under any circumstances" rule to our guild.  Rather than put up with that, they quit.  Our leader admits she hates raiding and even grouping and doesn't want to do it, but that she wants to make it fair for the rest of us.  Guild drama is one thing you should work to avoid!

...

So do you all enjoy being her little sychophants, or are you just too lazy to find/ form another guild?  Talk about control issues, holy shit.

How would a guild like that get new members?

"Guild recruiting new members!  We are very fair and avoid drama!  For example: We don't raid and hate grouping.  Certain members are not allowed to play together so no one feels excluded.  We have tabards and a guild bank that anyone can deposit stuff into!  Of course, only the GM can make withdrawls so no one will feel excluded and to avoid guild drama.

Crap.. I'm going to have my bank alt spam that in trade tomorrow.

Short answer, they don't. A similar thing happened with one of my friends when his guild joined the raiding alliance. They thought he was constantly grouping with us and never doing stuff with the guild. However, all they wanted to do was dick around in 5 mans all day long, and this was well over a year after initial release. So they booted him, and one of our guild partners picked him up. Then, the guild left the alliance to "do their own thing." Since then, they imploded, all switched over to Horde side on the server, and currently only have 12 active characters that have leveled beyond 60.

It's been a common thing with a raiding alliance setup. It offers people who like their guild members to stay in that group, even if they don't raid. However, sometimes the guild itself gets pissed off that you aren't spending enough time with them. I've experienced it was well.

In our raiding alliance, we wound up eating the other guild. They were delicious.

 :eat:

I am too lazy to go find someplace else that will be just as bad.  And I'm supposed to be tanking Naxx this Sunday and not doing it would be mean ;-)

Honestly, finding a good guild is hard.  I am not hardcore enough to 17-man 25 man instances for achievements like my old friends who still play, but at the same time I want to see *some* endgame content.  Especially now that the barrier is so low to entry with no more farming to exalted reps for months on end to get keys to get attuned to higher end content.

We eat other guilds actually.  Raiding alliances, they put out quite a bit of effort to get noticed, then drop off the effectiveness scale once they join.  We get 1-2 quality members for every time it happens.

Wait.  What ?

You had a guild bank that only raiders could deposit into and the GM was the only chap who could get anything out.  Then, after a while, you kicked out all the raiders leaving the GM with a GB full of, assuming here, other peoples items ?

That's an awesome Scheme.  I am envious of the complete fucking tools you fleeced.

I find it highly doubtful the guild you described is "good". I could not imagine any decently skilled and geared player putting up with that level of bullshit.

That is why I never used the bank.  I don't think anyone else ever did either.  I also didn't do any kicking, they left on their own (without having invested in the GB).  Me and one other person are the only ones left who actually did raid that was worth much.  Everyone else is pretty casual.

And they don't!  I'm still not happy about all of this, since it happened 3 day ago.  I just haven't bothered to leave yet.