Guild Bank Donations

My women's ministry teacher once held up a stained pink baby jumpsuit and a similar outfit she'd found on sale for $1 at WalMart. She asked "Which would you prefer for your own children?"

She set the little outfits down and proceeded to explain that many people leave ruined clothing and broken electronics in charity boxes, using them like guilt free trash cans. She said that the charities end up throwing those items away and do not appreciate getting them.

People use guild banks like that.

Last night, I had two eternals to put in the guild bank: fire and air. These are things my characters don't use. (For those of you who don't know, eternals are an important part of top level crafted gear and enchants.)

I open the guild bank and, like the time a real life friend filled it with cockroaches when he went on hiatus except not half as funny, someone had bloated the deposits tab with level 13-17 rings and necks, the ones you get from leveling jewelcrafting.

Because I'd heard the old guild leader complaining about this sort of thing on our couch between episodes of Veronica Mars, and because I knew it would just end up a headache for the bank officer no matter what the person putting them in had intended (most people don't think of it as malicious, they just think someone might be able to use their junk), I took it upon myself to guilt the offender into never doing it again.

A warlock friend offered to take the items and disenchant them, then return the mats to the bank, and I told him I doubted the guild bank even wanted the mats. The old guild leader (my disenchanter) had glared at me the day before for sending him level 10 greens to disenchant. I figured that meant the officers weren't dying to have Strange Dust in the guild bank.

But it is an interesting issue. People hold on to low level items because someone might need them, and the guild bank seems a logical place for someone to find what they need. But when most of the guild is at the highest levels, then the guild bank needs room for the rarest and most expensive materials, not things you can buy stacks of on the auction house for silver.

Guilds typically have people who put things in but never take anything out and other people who take things out but never put anything in. The result is that we have three black Valentines dresses in the deposits tab and a bunch of Preserved Holly (which I asked for and then distributed among a handful of guildies with the order to use it up).

While it would be possible to start a secondary guild for a bank to hold low level items, I know from our current bank that it would just sit there and molder with things people don't need. The best thing any member can do for his or her guild is to ask in guild chat if anyone needs what you have and then sell, disenchant, or vendor it.

Each individual should be responsible for taking care of his or her own pre-endgame items. Like giving a broken toaster to a charity with the idle thought that they might fix it, you're just adding one more step on its way to the trash.

---------------------------

Beth Blevins is a former officer in In Vino Veritas.

She's a writer, artist and avid blogger.

Beth's been married since her junior year of college.