No, I'm not going to ask what I should do, or what you would do, with half a billion gil. Instead, I'm going to tell a story about what I've already done with it all.
This post is about a new way to run Dynamis. Actually, it's not so new anymore, because I've been doing it this way for just over two years, and I'm not the only one. I probably wasn't even the first, but when I started this endeavor, there certainly weren't many others. This isn't the first time I've talked about it, but it will be the first time I've talked about it here on BG.
And no, this isn't some hypothetical scenario. It's not "I'm going to do something cool" or "hay guys, I have a (stupid) idea that's going to change the game forever!" This is about what is actually possible, because it is what actually happened.
In late 2007, I took over leadership of my Dynamis shell. In conjunction with that, I cut off our outside sponsors and declared that we would continue as a self-funded, profit-sharing linkshell. All currency was to be sold at market value, with profits split between members based on attendance on a monthly basis. We already had an attendance and AFv2 tracking website, so I added all of our financial data to the same system. Every detail was made viewable by all of our members. I loaned the shell a couple million gil to get started, as did one of my sackholders, and we went to work.
The shell at the time was about a year old, and had been struggling to maintain membership. Most of the original members were new to dynamis, and quite a few of them were new to endgame entirely. We had progressed to the point where we could routinely win cities, which was good enough to attract a few "advanced" players, but there really wasn't much to talk about. We had done Xarcabard a few times... even attempted the Dynamis Lord once. Relics dropped. People came and went. Etc. etc.
By the second month, we had repaid our loans, established a cash reserve to sustain us while currency sales were pending, and had enough left over to make a small payout. Members were happy to get something, though it wasn't much. Our struggles continued, and the next few months brought more of the same. But by the spring of 2008, word had spread. Membership and profit were on the rise. In March, we obtained our first RDM hat and finally killed the Dynamis Lord. Of course other shells had done that long ago and many times since, but it was a major milestone for us.
So, fast forward to the present. We are a bit more selective about who we let into the shell, but we still welcome people who are new to endgame. A typical month will see us visit 2 cities, 4 northlands, and 2 CoP zones. In cities, instead of aiming for a win, we're disappointed with anything less than a full clear. Northlands are profitable, even when we're not mercing animated weapons for other shells. We've kept our profit-sharing model, and our typical monthly payout for full attendance, per member, is around 1M gil.
That's not really a lot, considering the number of hours spent in dynamis, and a lot of members could do better simply farming. But it has done wonders for our recruiting (we don't spamvertise with /sh in whitegate) and member retention. For people who don't have a lot of time to spend on activities solely for the purpose of making gil, 1M/month is a pretty decent chunk of change.
And so, with that, last night I handed out our 500 millionth gil in payouts (and then some). What did I do with half a billion gil? I gave it away. Well, not exactly, when you consider that it was never really mine to begin with. But in any case, I've made a lot of people very happy, and that's exactly what I plan to do with my next half billion gil as well. Maybe a few other people will be inspired to do the same.