Hello,
Now that we’ve finally got confirmation of OCE servers i can move onto the second most important subject being GDKP.
Aggrends comments on the Q&A in regards to GDKP
1.Main reason - It’s too popular and everyone wants to do it and we want to protect the traditional guild structure but also we don’t like to tell people how to play the game.
2.Second reason - Once it becomes too popular there is a barrier to entry if you don’t have a lot of resources as a newer player and if you are a “Carry” its great you get items and gold on the side for raid while newer players “Have” to buy gold to get past the barrier of entry.
3.GDKP is a way for bad actors to launder gold.
4.We need GDKP’s to afford consumables ?
5.Too lenient on gold buyers and we made it easy for them to get around our actions in the past. We are going to take this very serious and punish them very very hard with permanent bans (Implied from giving example of 22 yr old wow account its not worth losing that account permanently)
A player response to GDKP addressing the above
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1. The reason why gdkp’s become so popular is it creates a more engaging and fun enviroment for players and addresses some of the current flaws in the old system
a) It rewards players for there time regardless if they win loot or not they always end a raid with gaining something whether its there next big item or a decent amount of gold to put towards that character an alt or consumes or anything else that gold can be used for in the game.
b) It becomes significantly easier to run pug groups with likeminded players which means more raids forming and more social interactions where usually you would restricted mostly to your own guilds playerbase. GDKP’s allow many different players to come together and play together outside of that guild only environment.
c) Some guilds do not want to have to do the admin work to run multiple raid teams so if you have many alts who you want to keep in your main guild you become limited to finding raids for them but GDKP’s since they encourage pug groups more give those alts a home if the guild your in does not want to provide other raid teams.
d) A lot of the classic playerbase are now older they have less time to invest and do not have time to farm gold but most still enjoy raiding allowing players to be able to make gold via a few hour raid deters gold buying because you’ve given a legitimate way for players to make a decent amount of gold within the game.
It also means players who have more time to invest are able to get items after and as an offset it makes the people with less time richer giving them access into gdkp’s easier.
Lastly it does not stop players from still playing in the traditional guild structures in which most did on there main including myself so the arguement gdkp’s destroy the traditional guild structure is not true at all.
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2.The barrier to entry requirement is false and misleading way to try to sell the anti-gdkp propaganda and here is why.
a) Every player in the game collects gold its the currency of the game pretty much everything you do in the game revolves around making gold to some extent which means its not a barrier to entry and the longer gdkp’s run the cheaper items become.
b) The loot systems for traditional guilds are essentially the same they use loot councils and the loot goes to either the gm/officers or good players while the newer players usually are at the bottom of the list would you then say the barrier to entry into guild raiding is also difficult ? no so its a flawed arguement against gdkp’s as well.
c) If you did your job with policing bots actively and monitoring gold flow and actually punished players who rmt with permament bans which ive asked for many years ago then rmt does not exist the only gold used in gdkp’s is the gold players earned themselves.
Instead you let people launder money through guild banks and either not ban them or give them 2 week bans so players just use a burner account buy gold put it in a gbank and away they go the problem lies on your policities around rmt not on players wanting to do gdkp’s nobody is “Forced” to buy gold or rmt.
That’s like saying an expensive item on the AH forces players to have to rmt or because my epic mount is going to cost me 1000 gold then i have to rmt otherwise how could i possibly get it ? its a ridiculous arguement to make if you want your mount go farm it if you want to participate in gdkp raids go farm some currency.
Ultimately it rewards players who play the game more offten and play more characters/raid more often this is a GOOD thing for the game overall.
a) Second accounts aka burner accounts
b) Guild banks and mixing gold
c) Buying from friends privately or having gold farmers within the guild
The list goes on and on punishing players who enjoy gdkp because you were lazy on combatting bots/rmt and gave out extremely lenient 2 week bans to people is on you not us.
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4. We don’t need gdkp’s for consumeables but because you couldn’t fix the economy properly and had megaservers and bots everywhere and you ban them in waves after months and months then the economy gets inflated and a way to offset that was with gdkp’s
a) Stop banning bots after months when they’ve already made a profit and destroyed the economy and have 100 more accounts ready to go start policing them and banning them instantly.
b) Have actual staff who monitor rmt / gold flow and player reports for botting use the players to help you find the bots we know who bots we know where they are how they work and we report them all the time the issue is you never do anything or it takes so long for something to happen that its essentially pointless anyway.
If i report a bot it should be offline banned within 30-60 mins or at most 24 hours not months.
a) players have been asking you to unban gdkp’s and permanently ban rmt players for years if anything gdkp’s work to your advantage you claim they attract rmt then simply use them as a HONEY POT if your claim is true then you have a centralized spot where players who rmt would go to spend that illegal gold ban them and remove the gold simple.
You will say it makes it too difficult because the gold gets split ? how is that any different to if a player buys 20k and then buys a bunch of items on the auction house and all those players who made sales receives a part of that 20k ?
You still ban the guy who bought the 20k gold and then you have the option of either removing the individual gold from each person or leaving it there if its too much work the point is you can’t use the excuse for gdkp but then ignore it for all other ways rmt gold is used.
The takeaway from this post
GDKP is not a negative thing it does not cause or make rmt worse that is a problem on your end and gdkp is good for the game its good for the social aspect of meeting new players and for promoting more active raids and alt raids its simply been used as a scapegoat for blizzards poor policing and policies against bots and rmt.
The solution is simple
Allow GDKP’s to return the experiment you pushed in sod and anniversary has failed it did not stop rmt infact it made it worse every singe player knows this to be true.
Now try a different approach unban GDKP’s and enforce a strict rmt/bot policy of permanent battle.net account closures for anyone caught buying gold/selling gold.
(The only caveat i have to these bans is you need to get them right and you need to fix your terrible support/appeal system so no AI is involved so if you do make mistakes its extremely easy for players to work through the system to get the ban overturned not a nightmare like it currently is for players needing to make 60 tickets and take months.)
Actively pay staff to monitor bots in realtime and deal with them within a 24 hour time window.
Thank you!
Elron 
