With the current issue going on, and the fact that it is ONLY available in player housing. We need another access point to the Banking system. There is no reason to lock the banks behind the housing server. Plenty of unused houses in Old Town that could be used for the Bank. It would also be able to be easily modified in a feature update to include Gold ( current limit could be the amount a player can hold) Or Treasure cards (non shared bank).
Totally agree on adding it to Olde Town. But adding it to the Commons might also work. We do have Castle Tours there already. No reason why one of the buildings near Unicorn Lane, Wizard City Library or the Fairgrounds wouldn't work to serve as a Bank.
While it would be great to have Shared Bank include Gold storage, personal bank include Gold storage, especially for leveling a character since so much of the main storyline doesn't change much from one school to the next (which can be very tedious and repetitive when leveling your 5th or 6th character). The downside of this would be granting players a much higher gold limit. If you have 7 characters (current maximum) each with 475,000 gold each, all of them could just use the Shared Bank to transfer gold to a single character. So one day, without farming, after having max gold on all 7 characters, max gold in personal bank for each character (so every character has 950,000 gold in backpack + personal bank) and an additional 300,000 in shared bank, that's 6,950,000 gold. That's almost 70 hatches of over 100,000 gold each!
And also there's an issue with adding other functions in game, such as shared reagents (I know you didn't mention this). So much of the game tries to act as if you're trying to "earn" the accomplishments of each character on his own, without being walked through difficulties by just buying the best equipment with gold or just receiving reagents from another character. While the player-focused perspective thinks of rewarding the player for his efforts with an easier/faster leveling experience, the character-focused perspective is that this game is an MMO-RPG, so there's still a Role-playing aspect to it.
There is, however, a workaround to this. You know how banks in real-life can be used for transferring money, rather than just storing it? Why couldn't all of the characters on a single player's account be considered part of the same "in-game family", all related? And thus, allowed to transfer gold to one another? Just as an older brother can help his little brother who is still in college by transferring some money as a gift or just to help him out, why couldn't an "older brother" character on a player account help out a "younger brother" character on the same account? At least, that would serve as an in-game reason to allow it. There's still the way it affects gameplay.
(I feel like the developers should discuss this and get the community involved. Maybe the devs can see what parts of this can be implemented, along with what changes would have to happen for this to work. Maybe addition of gold storage requires less gold from sale of equipment at bazaar? Then maybe the devs could let the community vote on it.)
