I’ve got a personal guild, which I’ve also heard labeled as a “Vanity” guild.

That is, it’s a guild that isn’t a real “guild” as you’d think about it normally on the game – I’m the only member of my guild, or if there’s someone else in it for a time, they’re only there to help me accomplish something, like inviting my alts into the guild.

This guild I have isn’t used for regular guildly things, either.

In fact, it was set up for one primary reason: Guildmasters can set up their Guild Bank, and when items or money are deposited or withdrawn, that action is logged.

Why Does Guild Bank Logging Matter?

In this day and age of hacks and spyware and trojans slipping onto our computers through malicious websites and the likes, lots of people get their World of Warcraft accounts hacked.

People log in to find their primary character has been transferred to another server and stripped down, all their money is gone, and most of their characters and banks are bare, too.

When they get restored by Blizzard, I’ve heard that many got a likeness of their gear back (maybe not exact, but kinda close), have had their professions restored and characters transferred back to correct realms, and bank objects restored as well, but one thing I’ve consistently heard… the MONEY never was restored.

Considering saving up for an epic mount means you could have 5-6k on your plethora of characters at any time, and I have three toons with epic flyers, that “losing your money to a hacker” thing always made me nervous.

The moment Guild Banks were on the PTR’s I went and played with them, and the moment they released to the live realms, I had a Vanity Guild set up already to take advantage of the new technology.

My Guild Bank is where I store the majority of my money now, where I can see a record of the deposits and withdrawls, and hopefully Blizzard can, too, for restoring things to the way they originally were.

Setting Up Family With Their Own Vanity Guilds

I’ve helped both my Father and my Brother set up Vanity Guilds in-game now, after having explained my primary reason for setting one up myself. Dad’s eyes got wide when I told him about it, thinking about losing the 2k he had carefully saved up on his way to 70, and it wasn’t a hard sell on my brother, either.

After helping Dad through the process, I wrote up a document about the steps we took and the keys that made the process quick and easy and not annoying to everyone involved. When helping my Brother get his going, the document was refined further, in order to make it easy to a new player.

If you’re interested, you can check it out here:

World of Warcraft – How To Set Up Your Own Guild by WoWGrrl