How it works

In a guild buyback, the guild buys materials such as herbs, ore and cloth from its own members, at prices it publishes. Members sell without the auction house's fees or waiting for a buyer; the guild gets what its raids and crafters need, and sells on the rest.

Guild Buyback runs the program in the game. The banker needs the addon: the character, named by the guild master, that holds the guild's buying gold and receives the mail. The guild master needs it once, to name the banker. Members can sell with just a mailbox; with the addon it takes a few clicks.

1. The banker publishes a price list

The banker builds the list on the Desk, the addon's banker window, from items in the bags, ready-made lists or Auctionator scans, and presses Publish. For each item the list holds:

• a reference price: what the item sells for on the auction house, from the banker's Auctionator scans smoothed over a week (Auctionator is an auction house addon that records prices), or a price the banker types;
• a buy price for each way of being paid, as a share of the reference price;
• a weekly cap: how many the guild takes in 7 days.

Each item is in one of two groups. Guild needs are materials the guild uses itself, for raids and crafting. Resale items are bought to sell again, so they pay less: the guild carries the risk that their price falls.

These are the defaults; the banker can change them. For example, for a Guild needs item whose reference price is 1 gold, the guild pays 95 silver as gold now, 98 silver as gold later, or 1 gold in credit.

Publishing sends the list to every guild member who is online with the addon. Members who log in later get it from the banker, or from another member while the banker is offline; a copy passed on by a member counts only if it matches what the banker announced. For members without the addon, the banker can post the list as text, for example in Discord.

2. Members see the prices

With the addon, the tooltip of every item on the list shows what the guild pays for it, each way, and how many more the guild takes this week. At a mailbox, the Sell panel lists the items in your bags that are on the list.

Without the addon, members read the posted list and mail by hand: a C.O.D. at the gold-now price, or a plain mail for credit on items the guild needs (more in the FAQ).

3. Members sell by mail

In the Sell panel you pick the items and one of three ways to be paid. The addon fills in the mail to the banker, and you press Send.

• Gold now is a C.O.D. mail. C.O.D. (cash on delivery) is the game's own mail option: the receiver must pay the amount to take the items. The banker pays it when accepting your mail, and the game mails the gold to you.
• Gold later is a plain mail. The guild owes you the gold and pays it out later. It pays a little more than gold now.
• Credit is a plain mail. The amount goes on your credit balance, which buys from the guild store. It pays the most.

Gold now is offered for sales of 10 silver or more. WoW: Forever asks you to confirm any mail with items to another player's account, and such mail is expected to take about an hour to arrive.

If the banker changes a price after you send, you still get the price you saw, as long as the banker accepts your mail within 48 hours of the change (24 hours for Resale items). After that the new price applies. If your C.O.D. asks more than the new price, the mail waits for the banker to accept or return it.

4. The banker accepts the mail

At a mailbox, the banker's Inbox window checks every sale mail: the sender is in the guild, the items are on the list, the C.O.D. asks no more than the list price, and the weekly cap has room. Mail that passes is marked as verified. Anything else is shown first, for the banker to decide.

Accept all asks the banker to confirm once, then takes the verified mail one at a time. Each C.O.D. is paid as its mail is taken. Mail the guild does not want goes back to the sender, and the addon can whisper why.

5. The ledger records the sale

The ledger is the addon's record of every purchase, payment and credit, kept on the banker's character. It records only what the game confirms: the items actually taken and the gold actually paid.

• Gold now is paid when the mail is taken.
• Gold later joins the payout queue, which runs oldest first. The banker sends payout mails that the addon fills in, one member at a time.
• Credit goes on the member's balance as soon as the banker accepts the mail. The banker can also turn credit into gold owed, one for one, from 5 gold.

Two limits keep payouts from emptying the guild's gold. Payouts total at most 200 gold in any 7 days. And in one day, C.O.D.s and payouts together stay within a quarter of the banker's buying gold at the start of the day: the gold on the banker's character, less any reserve the banker sets aside. The banker can change both limits.

To see where you stand, hover over the addon's minimap button, or type /gbb sales refresh while the banker is online: the banker's addon answers with your balance, your place in the payout queue and your latest sales.

6. The guild store

What the guild bought becomes its stock. The banker keeps back what raids and crafters need, and members can buy the rest in the guild store, which opens from the minimap button. Store prices sit above anything the guild pays for the same item (105% of the reference price by default), so nobody can buy from the store and sell back at a profit.

A member asks for an item and picks how to pay: with credit, by C.O.D. (paid when the mail arrives), or from gold the guild owes them. The request reaches the banker's Store requests window, where the addon fills in the mail and the banker sends it. A request not filled within 48 hours expires.

What nobody in the guild wants, the banker can sell on the auction house. The addon reads the auction house's mail and records the sale.

Why gold later and credit pay more

The three ways trade time for gold: the less gold the guild must hand over on the day it buys, the more it pays.

For the guild

• Gold now needs the gold on hand when the mail is accepted, and on a new realm gold is short, most of all in the first weeks.
• Gold later lets the guild take the materials now and pay once gold has come in, for example after a raid, or after the store or the auction house has sold what it bought. Each payout mail pays a member everything owed that fits the limits, so there are fewer, larger gold mails.
• Credit needs no gold at all: the member spends it on stock the guild already holds. Fewer gold mails matter too: in the beta, Blizzard's checks against gold selling flagged some ordinary gold mails by mistake.
• Both are still debts. The addon counts them with everything else the guild owes, and stops buying when the guild's gold and stock no longer cover them.

For the member

• Gold now pays the least, but the gold is on its way as soon as the banker accepts.
• Gold later pays a little more (98% of the reference price instead of 95% on Guild needs, 83% instead of 80% on Resale). You wait in the payout queue and can see your place in it.
• Credit pays the most: the full reference price on Guild needs, 85% on Resale. It is the best deal if you will buy from the guild store anyway, and the banker can turn it into gold owed if you need gold.

What keeps the gold safe

• The guild pays only for the mail it checked. Taking the items from a C.O.D. mail is what pays it, so just before each take the addon reads the inbox again and looks for that exact mail: the same sender, subject, C.O.D. and items. If the mail has changed, or two mails look exactly alike, the addon stops and the banker decides by hand.
• The guild stops buying before it owes more than it holds. The addon keeps count of the banker's buying gold, the stock and everything the guild owes in credit and gold later. It stops buying by itself when either is true:
  • the buying gold, plus what the stock would fetch from a vendor, no longer covers what the guild owes;
  • the list is too big for the gold: if the guild bought everything the list still takes this week, at the gold-now price, and could only sell it to a vendor, it would lose more than a fifth of the buying gold.
  The banker can change both levels. While buying is stopped, the Sell panel says "The guild is not buying right now" and tooltips say "intake paused". Mail already on its way is not taken by itself: it waits in the Inbox until the banker accepts or returns it. The addon checks again after every change to the ledger or the list, and starts buying again once the numbers recover.
• A changed mail is not recorded until the banker says what it was. The addon fills in payout and store mails, and the banker presses Send. If the banker changes one before sending it (the amount, the recipient or the items), what left is not what the addon prepared, so it records nothing and asks. The banker then chooses: count the mail as it left, or record nothing and leave the gold owed or the order open. Until then, that member gets no further payout and that order cannot be filled.

More of the rules it follows are on the Technical page. See these steps in the addon's own windows: the demo.