I really meant to finish up the post on receiving yesterday, but I was so sleepy all day. Will try to do that today!

I’m most apt to give gold when I don’t know of anything specific to send someone. Like the two people that took me along on their Guild events. Since I didn’t know what they might want or need, I sent gold instead. Like you insinuated, it’s more impersonal than I’d like, and I try to avoid it when I can. But if I want to help someone with Epic flight, for example, sending gold itself is really the only option. But I always send a letter along with it.

As for the friend who was leveling Blacksmiting, what I MEANT to say was that I went and got her a few hundred gold worth of Saronite Ore. (Not being a Miner myself, I had to buy it.)

Your attitude regarding “thanks” is very nice. I’d never really thought of it in those terms, but now that I do, it makes a lot of sense.

I look forward to the column on gift receiving.

I do like to do the spontaneous giving too. When it’s close friends, I go by a “whats mine is yours” mentality and with other people, it just depends on whether I feel generous at that moment.

I don’t keep track of who thanks me and who doesn’t after Christmas, but I’d guess it’s about half. It doesn’t bother me because if I’m sending something their way, then most likely they’ve given me plenty (be it time, items, kindness, help, whatever) over the year and the little holiday token is me saying thank you.

As far as WoW goes, I do like to reciprocate in some way for gratuitous acts of kindness, or things that people went out of their way for. I’ve always had this (probably irrational) fear of making people go out of their way for me, and I like for them to know that I appreciate what they’ve done. So I always like to send a nice in-game letter along with some gold or some items.

The above also applies to those that I consider my friends, but for them I also like to give a little something when holidays or birthdays roll around. (I always like to learn when birthdays are for my friends.) I like making one of those Delicious Chocolate Cakes and sending it along with some gold and another “birthday present”.

And this past Christmas, I even sent 50g each and a nice in-game letter to a couple of people that were kind enough to include me in a couple of events. Since I’m not in their Guild, and they had no obligation to include me, it touched me that they wanted to include me; someone that just happned to meet one of them in a Heroic PuG (pre-cross-realm Dungeons). Acts of kindness have always meant a great deal to me.

I’m also very fond of spontaneous gift-giving. More than once I’ve had a friend make an off-hand remark about the cost of leveling Blacksmithing or some other profession, or needing more for Epic flight, and I’ll send them a few hundred gold after they log out to surprise them when they next pop in. The reactions to those times are always priceless.

Male or female, it doesn’t matter to me. I trust that my female friends (who are almost all in relationships of their own to begin with) know that I don’t mean anything inappropriate by my actions. And I have yet to get a negative response from anyone to a gift that I’ve given.

I’ve even gotten the street addresses of some of my closer WoW friends, so that I can send them tangible Christmas or birthday cards.

And all that I ever ask in return is a simple “Thank you”. I get them far more often than I don’t, and knowing that I made someone’s day a little better, even if it was just through pixels on a screen, means so much to me.