World of Warcraft has nine classes to choose from when creating your character, Warrior, Paladin, Hunter, Rogue, Mage, Warlock, Shaman, Druid, and Monk. But there is a secret tenth class, in, the Banker. Each player has a limited amount of space to store items in. Each item takes up one bag slot, though some stack up to a certain level (often 20). Gear is always one item per slot. There are several options for storage available with varying uses.
On your person, you can carry 5 bags, one being the core 16 slot “backpack”, the other being varying sizes depending on what kind of bags you have. Most low level players have 6-8 slot bags, there is a 14 slot bag that can be bought easily and cheaply from the Bag Vendor, the most common largest non specialized bags are the Frostweave (20 slots) and Embersilk (22 slot) bags that can be tailored. Mists of Pandaria added the 28 slot Royal Satchel for Tailors to make as well, though getting the recipe is a long reputation grind and then the materials to make the Royal Satchel require a daily cooldown.
A level 90 character likely has 4 Frostweave or Embersilk bags in addition to their core 16 slot backpack giving them 96-102 slots on their person. There are also specialized 32 slot bags for professions, such as a 32 slot herb bag, or 32 slot mining bags.
Players also get a bank, which is only accessible from a bank but allows long term storage of less used items and trinkets or particularly notable items the player may have picked up over their travels. The base bank has 28 slots and has an additional 7 bag slots for purchase. Bag slots work like the player bags, in that any bag can be stuck in a bag slot. Having a full compliment of Frostweave or Embersilk bags in the bank will give the player somewhere around another 120-130 item slots.
There is also a Void Storage vault. This is a special 80 slot bank that is primarily used for storage of armor that a player wants to use for Transmogrifying. Transmogrifying (where one armor is given the appearance of another) can be done directly from the Void Storage. It costs a player 100g to unlock the Void Storage vault and another 25g per item to deposit items into storage. It’s not cheap to use so anything that is frequently taken in and out is not recommended for Void Storage.
In the end, a single player is looking at around 300 item slots to keep junk they collect.
You can get a LOT more with a Bank Alt. Many items that clutter up your inventory are crafting Materials. These are items you may need later and in large quantities. They may also be items that you are just collecting up to sell on the auction house. They may e items you want to keep for an alt, such as Heirloom Gear. All of these items are much more effective when pooled on a character that is dedicated to storage. This character will never run any quests, so he doesn’t have to worry about carrying quest items or upgrading his gear or hauling around vendor trash items. The Banker can be loaded up with bags dedicated to storage of items.
With a little effort the banker can be part of his own guild, giving access to an even larger and much nicer storage space in the form of the Guild Vault. I finally gave my Banker a guild but wandering around Orgrimmar offering 20g to anyone who would sign my guild charter. It takes 4 other folks to create a guild but only one person is required to maintain it. So you can get people to sign up, then kick them out. If you are upfront about this they often won’t even care that you’re kicking them. Generally, characters without a guild (necessary to be able to sign) are low level and could use a few gold anyway.
Each page of the Guild Vault has 98 slots. The cost to open a new page is increasingly larger but for a few thousand gold you can eventually, easily get an extra 400 or so bank slots.
The Guild Bank is organized very nicely too, especially compared to the player bank. Each tab can be given a custom icon and name, making sorting large amounts of Materials really nice. Another nice benefit is that you can give yourself a fun custom title as your Guild Name. This really helps for the aspect of tricking out your Banker. Some people choose to run around as naked Orc bankers, I prefer to run around in a stylish Banker Suit.
