Guildleader chores - Maintaining the cashflow

Lissanna of Restokin was writing on her blog the other day about "Where have all the guild funds gone?" and before I even clicked to read it, I kind of knew what she was talking about.

Back in Cataclysm, there used to be recipes and BOEs that we could sell on the auction house and we used to make a lot of money that way.  Guild coffers were full and we had all the repair money we needed.

However, in Pandaria, there weren't as many of those opportunities.  There were still BOEs but they didn't sell as well, and the guild funds dwindled, and we didn't have enough money to repair - we had to repair ourselves.  In fact, we all got so used to it that even now, I still use my own money to repair.  There were no guild donations, and we used to give DKP for people donating herbs and stuff for flasks.

Since we moved to Saurfang, guild money has been better.  Probably because I had been lazy and forgot to fix the repair allowances until Lushnek pointed it out to me the other day.  I will do that - on raid days, repair allowances will go up to 300g instead of the piddly amount it is at the moment! (There was also a strange bug with the guild repairs when we first moved, people seemed to be able to repair non stop even though I set a limit on repairs, which was weird, so I lowered the repair threshold).  And, when Fallnapart left the server to go with Gutsy to Jubei'thos, he left a whole heap of gold in the guild bank because he couldn't take it with him, that boosted the funds a bit.

Now, for a 25 man guild like Lissanna's, their weekly expenditure is massive compared to ours.
"we’ve netted an approximate loss of 250,000 gold in the first few weeks after the start of 5.4"
I can't even imagine how much money that is.  It makes me cringe because unlike Fue, who was quite the gold maker, I can't make gold to save my life!  And now I have to help balance the guild bank cashflow too??  I realised now that our guild bank cash has been sitting steady because of the limits on repairs that I hadn't fixed, but as of next week, I will fix that, since donations have started.

There are other ways for the guild to make money, that we don't use to our full capacity.  Weekly guild challenges are one thing - you can get

Raiding challenge x 1 = 1000g
Dungeon challenge x 7 = 250 x 7 = 1750g
Scenario x 15 = 250 x 15 = 3750g
Challenge mode x 3 = 500 x 3 = 1500g
Rated Battlegrounds x 3 = 500 x 3 = 1500g

Rated BGs are not something we're going to do, but if we completed all the others, that would be 8000g a week.  Repairs for raiders if I set it up properly will be 300g per person a night over 3 nights which is 9000g a week.  And of course there is Cash Flow, so there will be trickles of gold coming in from there too, with many people still questing, and farming stuff for food and crafting items.  The Timeless Isle is awful in that you don't get gold from any of the loots there, so Cash Flow suffers because a lot of people are spending time on the Timeless Isle instead of the Isle of Thunder (where gold still did drop from mobs).

Lissanna had a list of things that she thought Blizzard should implement to help raiding guilds with their cashflow problems.  They included:

  • Turning spirits of war into a valued currency
    It is a pretty useless currency IMO.  I think at least with Haunting Spirits people needed to buy them to craft, but these ones aren't REALLY required to make items, just helps to make items faster.  So bring back the hard to get items so you can craft the high end gear. I know that the casual players didn't like that because it meant that only guilds could access the gear (unless you bought the currencies for super high prices) so I am unsure how Blizz would go with this direction.
  • Adding back BOE raiding items
    I'm not sure why they took them away in the first place.  I would have to get one of the other officers to sell these things because I totally would forget to sell it or I'd end up giving it away.
  • Increase guild raiding challenge rewards
    I like this idea.  At least putting it to 3 per week instead of one would put us to 3000g.  I think it would be better done as a per day thing, for those guilds that put more days into raiding, making their repairs overall more than those who clear everything quickly in 2 days (since those people probably don't need to repair much anyway since they're not dying, right?)
  • Bring back guild cauldrons
    A brilliant way to get flasks.  Heaps cheaper too!  I miss those cauldrons.  We have noodle carts, why can't we have cauldrons again?
There are things that I would add that would help guilds - not just raiding guilds
  • Add arena challenge rewards
    Scenarios are there, why aren't arenas?  Now that they aren't done as teams anymore and can be done via Battletags and RealID, it would be nice to have guild groups going to get some cash flowing. Of course, I'm saying that because I arena and we would easily hit the weekly cap for some cash for the guild.  I'm thinking 4 games at 250g each maybe?
  • Alter Cash flow to include quests
    Cash flow works to give the guild bank 10% of gold looted from kills, but if dailies and quests were included in that as well, that would be a nice little gold siphon!
Lissanna also put out there the obvious question - why not just have everyone pay it themselves?

...why not have raiders pay for their own repairs and provide everything for themselves? Why do we even need a Guild Bank? That question can continue sofar as to: why do we even need guilds? Especially true with both LFR & Flex. The simple answer is we want to be able to create our own communities with our friends, we want to be able to craft our own collective narrative and history within the game, not just as individual players but as a broader guild...
It's a matter of what you're used to, I guess.  As a guild we got used to being poor and providing for ourselves.  However, it was the goodwill of guild members that kept us up for food and flasks when needed, but now I'm trying to formalise that process so that the goodwill is recognised and encouraged.  I'm hoping as our guild economy improves, we will be able to be comfortable with having all our raiding needs supplied for us by the guild - the danger of that is that when you get too comfortable, there is a great load of disgruntlement when those benefits are taken away.
The answer to a vibrant community is not simply connecting realms or removing barriers to raiding, it also includes making “Guilds” fun and interesting, making them a network of micro communities across realms that forms the backbone of the broader macro community in WoW.
Well said, Lissanna.  I couldn't agree more.

Comments

  1. I though Blizzard was pretty generous to guilds with gold etc. Can anyone remember the days where there was no guild bank and everyone had to pay their own repair bills? Many guilds even demand players bringing their own flask/food etc.

    We can ask the people to pay for their own repairs, but we must subsidize the plate and mail wearers since they pay more per damage to their items. It is probably good idea for guild to provide food/flasks but get guildies to supply that mats for these.

    In many guilds there are people who are gold makers. Yes, those annoying people who do nothing except camping AH whenever they are online. Not sure if Saurefang has small enough population that you can pick an item and monopolise it. Set up a business department in the guild :P For example we can say we want to control while trilium ore, then we farm the ore undercut everyone etc until we are one of the only one or two supplier of the damn thing. There is an art to all this. I use to try to make gold on AH on the side (back in BC and LK days) and it seems to work well.

    Alternatively we can set up instance group that just farm instances while gearing up their alts. All we need is one or two geared people and we can clean up instances pretty quickly. Or we could do entry level raids with core group which can clear them out quickly and hopefully get a few haunted spirits to sell on the AH.


    Ksret

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    Replies
    1. I have to remember to lower those guild repairs back down after raid days!

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