With Great Power comes Great Responsibility.

Despite what you may believe, it’s not easy leading a guild, ask any leader who’s guild has been around for more then one or two patches. We’ll be covering various aspect of Guild Leadership over the coming months. Dominating is more than just about DPS and gear.

In the last few months there have been quite a few things going on in-game for Dominate. With new leadership, sometimes you also get new ideas. One of the biggest challenges that any guild faces on a regular basis is dealing with the guild bank, funding it and allowing access to resources.

For starters you should know that it costs nearly 10,000 gold (9350 to be precise) to get all 6 possible bank tabs so before you gripe about your rights as a member, rememeber that someone paid for the bloody thing. Every guild has it’s own system for keeping it filled and it’s own ideas about how to use it and who should have access. Of course for most guild the problem isn’t distribution of wealth, really, the real challenge is Acquisition of said wealth to distribute.

Just as in-game we strive to give you tips and tricks to make your gaming experience more enjoyable, so too in this series we’ll share with you some things that we’ve picked up along the way.

There is no single way to fund the guild bank just as there is no single way to spend the resources in it. Cataclysm will make this significantly easier with the option to tithe members whenever they loot anything. Until then, here’s a nifty and fun little way to go about it.

Submitted Anonymously

GuildLotto

The basic premise of this strategy is exactly the same as most state lotteries. everyone who wants to, buys a “ticket”. At a set date, there is a “draw” and the winner takes home a large purse (say half the pot) and the other half goes to the guild bank . You can take this concept and tweak it all you want, I’ll just detail how we at Dominate are going about it.

There will be a lottery (4 actually) that anyone can buy into. Out of all the money accumulated from “ticket” purchases, half will go to the winner and half will go to the guild bank for mats, flasks and reagents to help fund the raiding (or whatever special project you have in mind)

Dominate will host 4 lotteries:
The Lowbie lottery:

- Only open to those who don’t have a toon past 70
- Only 1 entry per person/human being (not character, not account)
- 5 gold entry
- 2 winners (50% and 25% of the pot respectively)
- 1 draw/week (Fridays?)

Leveling Loto:

- Only one entry /human player
- Open to anyone in the guild
- 25 gold buy in
- 1 draw/week (Fridays?)

Raider Loto:

- Only one entry /human
- Open to anyone in guild
- 100 gold buy in
- 1 draw/week (Fridays?)

There will also be an EPIC Lottery:

- Only 1 entry /human
- Only open to those who raid, are present or contributing in some way to Guild Raids.
- 1000 gold buy in
- 1 draw/MONTH (On the first of the month?)

Game Rules:

In order for this to work it has to be administered in fairness, impartiality and with complete transparency or you may as well just disband your guild right now.

If you ever lose the Respect and the Trust of your guildies, you are Finished as a guild Leader.

If you decide to play the Lottery you will be assigned a number (sequentialy) that will be yours as long the lottery is in place. There is no easy way to do this quickly and fairly in-game so we have to accommodate the rules of participation to the in-game mechanics available to us. In that respect, once a guild member choses to participate to the Lottery they will be attributed a number (sequential seems easiest for our purposes) and that number will not change (for admin purposes)

• All ticket purchases should be sent to a single character, created specificaly for this purpose: “<Guild>Lotto” character preferably from your main toon, stating which characters you are contributing for (Name your Alts) .
• Draws will be made from a /roll 1-xx (Where is the number of contributors) from that toon: <Guild>Loto.

• The Guild Bank will be aloted the first number to every lotery (roll 1 = Guild bank wins) but will re-roll for the lowbie Loto. Should the guild bank win a roll , the entire sum gets rolled over to next week’s Jack Pot

• If someone doesn’t want to play that week or doesn’t pay in time for the roll, and their fixed number comes up all the money is rolled over into the pot for next week’s “bouble jackpot “

• All roll will be made in the presence of at least 3 witnesses, Idealy in a raid group so everyone who’s interested can see the actual roll.

The purpose of this lottery is to supply the guild bank with sufficient funds to help out the Raiders with Flasks, Reagents, Enchants, pay for repair bills and whatever else the guild need. After all it’s a lot easier to raid when your gear is enchanted and socketed and you have flasks and repairs are paid for.

Just as there are rules for the lottery so too should there be basic rules for the administration.  Here are some guidelines:

1. Full disclosure and complete transparency (Not optional)
2. Clear, pre-established rules/guidelines as to where the money will go and who will have access to it.
3. A spreadsheet with everyone’s positions (numbers) will be made available to everyone in the guild as well as the totals for each jackpot. Web site, FTP, in-game mail, e-mail … whatever it takes.
4. Communicate with your members. Informed guild mates are trusting guild mates.

Everyone has his/her own idea of how it should be done, we’re just trying to share some ideas. Feel free to add your ideas on how you fund your guild bank, I’d love to hear about other success stories out there.