Why Bigger bags won't solve your problem

As a warlock in the wonderful World of Warcraft you learn to do a few things very well. You learn to deal with the fact that in WotLK you couldn't pvp if your life depended on it, you learn that being nerfed isn't the end of the world and thanks to soul shards you learn the most important thing of all: Inventory Management

I read a blogpost by Larisa (over at pink pigtail inn) detailing her woes with inventory management and decided it would be interesting to see if we can make inventory management a little easier for those who are continually fighting the bag space monster.

Let me start by saying: Bigger bags won't solve your issue. If you have a full bank now, you will most certainly have a full bank even if you stuff it full of 22 slot bags. Why? Because you're a disorganized packrat, that's why!

That's not to say it's bad being a packrat... I myself am a horrible packrat with a bad knack for collecting darkmoon cards, old world materials and even a fair set of white items. I swear that stuff will come in handy one day... yes it will... *nods forcefully*

The trick is to come up with a system that works for you, that takes away your need to analyze the situation and to keep you from thinking: 'what in the blazes am I going to do with this item?'

And for that you will need: Alts

If you don't have any alts consider rolling up a few death knights. Being as they start at level 55 they make both excellent bankers as well as profession slaves (something to power level professions on).

Of course any type of alt will do but if you're not into alts DK's only need to be levelled out of the starting zone and will make great choices.


Next it's time to run all your alts to the nearest bank and buy up all your bank slots and fill them with netherweave bags which go at a mere 8g a pop. If you can afford bigger bags then more power to you but realistically 16 slot bags should be ample space to store all your crud in. If you can't afford the bank slots yet just buy them as you go along.

If you have significant packrat ambitions then you might want to consider starting a guild on one of your alts and buying some bank tabs. Note that this method is expensive but may be a good long term solution to your storage problems.


So now that you have your alts, and they are all slotted up it's time to do the simple trick of assignment. Here's an example:

My paladin (incidentally my blacksmith) is responsible for all my ores/bars
My Druid (my alchemist) is responsible for all my Herbs/potions
My hunter (the leatherworker) is responsible for all my leathers/hides
My priest (friend of jewelcrafting) is responsible for all gems
etc.
etc.

The trick is to pick a responsible alt for each of the professions available. If you have dual gathering professions you can consider to store raw materials on that character and then send them off to the alts with crafting professions when needed. Last but not least pick an alt responsible for general crapola. Every now and then you come across an item that's interesting but not part of a specific crafting profession, that's where the 'crapola' alt comes in (hearts of darkness come to mind).

Got your assignments? Yes? Write them down... not in any orderly fashion, don't worry about that. Scribble them on your desk for all I care, the fact that you're scribbling them down in the first place will help you remember.

Now, we have alts, we have bankspace, we have bags, and we have a assigments.

The next time you go questing and your bags are full you simply follow these steps for each item you find:

1. Can I use it now? Use it!
2. Can I send it to an assigned alt and use it later? Send it!
3. Can't use it now? Can't use it later? Sell it!

Stop thinking about what to do with those things, use, send, sell the second you hit town. Let your alts worry about sorting out what comes in.

The last and final stage of Inventory management is dealing with all that junk you've been sending all over the place. I do my inventory management on fridays (no idea why) but you can do it on an incidental basis if you like. Just do it before your mailbox timer runs out otherwise it'll go straight back to the character who sent it in the first place.

I have a simple 2 stack policy on items. I will keep no more than 2 stacks or two items of the same kind. Two stacks are enough to supply an immediate (crafting) need. Anything else gets sold by the alt responsible for the product (that way you know what happened to that ore you sold).

The only exceptions to this rule is if you're stockpiling stuff for powerlevelling something or anticipate that you can sell it for a nice profit somewhere further down the line.

Not sure what to do with what you found? Send it to the crapola alt, that should be the only alt with any real bank-space issues and yes, you will have to sort through the crapola and decide what to do with it sooner or later.


That's all there is to it, the length of this blogpost belies its simplicity but it's a simple system with very few drawbacks.


So let's recap:

1. Make alts
2. Buy (Netherweave) bags and all bankslots on each alt
3. Assign materials to the alts (i.e. all ores/bars to the paladin)
4. Use, Send, Sell after you're done questing
5. On regular intervals (a week, two weeks) clean your alts mailbox keeping 2 stacks of each mat in total or two items of the same type (make exceptions if needed)

What you gain is an overview of where your stuff is and a general indication of how much of it you have but more importantly you can clean your bags out after you're done questing without having to do any inventory management at that time because you can simply send off whatever you have to the correct alts.

Incidentally you also build up enough stock to supply your crafting needs rather than having to buy it from the AH. Especially on low-pop servers a lot of items are simply not available on the AH when you need them... there's nothing more frustrating than being 1 mat short of what you want.

There's other ways to manage inventory... possibly better. But this way works for me so feel free to use it and modify it to suit your own needs.

Guilds and intrinsic sub-structures

Ok ok the title was a little far fetched and made to be a little bit complex sounding but this post will actually be about guilds and various sub-structures in guilds so it's not completely off base.

The whole thing was brought on by one of our guild's resto shamans deciding to respect enhancing and skip town. The primary reason was that he didn't have enough to do as a healer. There was no real reason for him to leave because no one would've complained about him being an enhancing shaman for as long as he liked.

Still we're not here to judge the little bastard for his decision but to take a look at how to deal with the constant flux of members especially in the healer and tank department because well... I've never heard of a DPS shortage.

People will leave guilds. Reasoning is not important, some are selfish, some get a life, others are just burnt out or looking for attention but people will leave.

Assuming that you can't prevent people from leaving a guild the only realistic thing you can do is make sure that the gap that's left by the person leaving is filled as good as possible.

Sure you can ask people to respec, but more often than not this has it's own downsides: People playing a spec that they don't enjoy, people feeling 'forced' to do things they don't want to do and so forth and so on.

This doesn't leave much room for anything else except to work with new healers and train them as fast as possible but also leaves the possibility of motivating to provide healer/tank alts once in a while for the occasional raid / instance.

Sounds good, but too vague to actually be useable so lets see if we can come up with a basic scenario on how to make things work by looking at some very simple motivators.

1. Levelling is easier in a 'guild' group (or at the very least is generally more fun)
2. Levelling is more pleasant when at fixed intervals you have guaranteed upgrades
3. Motivation improves if there's other people taking an interest in your progress
4. Motivation improves if there's other people working on your progress (for example sending you pieces of gear while you are offline)
5. Character building is easier if there's someone who can lay out a basic guideline on how to do things
6. Character building is more pleasant if there are clear goals involved.

Properly motivated people will have more fun levelling, will be more likely to return whatever assistance they may have gotten and will generally be positive about their outlook on the guild.

Ok... all things that are still very obvious so lets dive a little deeper on how these various levels of motivations can be achieved.

0. All guild members should be motivated to have alts on various levels, if they pick up a new class commend them for the effort, offer them some simple crafted gear to start out or boost their coffers with a small offering of 10g (which is a lot to lower level chars).
1. Each and every day assign a few people (volunteers) to help other people level. Compensate them for this levelling activity via some arbitrary reward system (I.e. guild rank, some consumables, recouping the cost of not doing dailies, brownie points, hugs etc.) and some friendly comments for every person they manage to drag through the day.

2. Stop disenchanting BoEs. Bind on equip items can be guild banked, sent around to various people or even saved up. The disenchant value is never higher than the value of seeing someone get an item in their mailbox that they didn't ask for but can use anyway. Should there really be no takers for the items then and only then should it be disenchanted. you're better of losing bankspace and stockpiling items than to DE them. On a side note it is important to keep the guild bank 'clean' from trashy items (useless food, sharpening stones and whatnot) because it gives the impression that it is used as a trashbin.

3. Comment often and in a positive way to someone's progress. If you know someone just dinged tell them good job, take the opportunity to see if they need a hand with a few quests. The point is to at least pretend you care even if you couldn't care less you have to keep up with appearance.

4. Similar to 2, but extend your thought beyond that. Sure you could DE that BoE green or blue but before you do simply think about each item, each resource that you get and are considering turning into enchanting mats / gold. Can someone else use this? If the answer is yes then for heaven's sake pass the item along. If you're low on cash and have been giving out a lot of items approach the guild leader for some form of compensation which can always be arranged.

5. Appoint someone who is knowledgeable about a class to give brief instructions or to be the contact point for class questions. Post the appropriate guides in short versions on the forums and focus on providing knowledge through central places. The forum is an excellent place to display class builds, discuss them and figure out what works. There's nothing more annoying than to pick a new class levelling it to 40 and then figuring out you've been stacking the wrong stats and picking talents that don't do the job as well as others. People should not have to look elsewhere for basic information, basic information must be at hand at all times. Leave the math and the spell coefficient to the elitist jerks and focus on providing basic information on what works and what doesnt.

6. Tell people what they can expect for levelling the character they're levelling. If they won't be seeing the inside of specific instances that they're expecting to get in with their new char make sure they know this and offer them alternative goals. Don't ever let people wonder why they levelled a char to 70. Most people can figure out their own motivation, but add to it whenever you can.

The whole point of a guild is to work as a team on something that looks like progress and have fun doing so. Each and every guild member should be considered one of your alts and given the love that you would provide your alts with. Be that money, items or simply the occasional boost.

Will people abuse this help? Well of course, there are always greedy bastards who don't think beyond their own gain. But those people will eventually be found and removed, or will leave on their own accord.
Wasting 100 BoE items on someone who leaves hurts, but it will also build up a coherent and loyal core of guildmembers and improve motivation dramatically.


Perhaps my lacking wow experience made me draw the wrong conclusion, but in all fairness there really is no point to a guild if the guild doesn't operate as one person (with lots of split personalities).