Let’s say hypothetically RMT didn’t exist. Would GDKP be a legitimate practice?
I don’t think so. I think the primary incentive would remain, for experienced guilds and players, that is, people perfectly capable of getting their BIS through MS/OS rolling with their guildmates… to run with inexperienced players and coerce them into spending more money for items than any reasonable person would.
I’m not sure if a scenario exists where the latter player has gold for this without RMT, but I also can’t think of a scenario where good players who earned gold legitimately are dropping gold on raid drops rather than running ms/os with their guildies.
Like yeah, you might have better luck than in a regular pug; but i think finding a guild to run with that will gear you out is much easier than farming hundreds of gold to drop in a gdkp pug.
Without big spenders creating huge pots in gdkp, I don’t see anyone having the motivation to do it.
They would spend whatever gold they deemed reasonable, that is not for you to decide.
The guild members carrying this would be incentivized to do this because the gold they would earn pays for their consumables, enchants, trade skills or their main and if enough gold is being made then for their alts as well. The guilded raider now needs to spend less time farming and instead the guildless guy who wants to raid and get gear who has been spending his time passively collecting gold with nothing to spend it on has an outlet for it.
In 04/05 people has thousands upwards of 10s of thousands of gold without RMT or GDKP. Personally I farmed SM Cath on my warrior for ~3-5k to afford myself Lionheart Helm, Stronghold Gauntlets and Titanic Legplates and still continued to earn enough gold that I went into TBC with somewhere between 5-10k. Yes this is all anecdotal and just my experience… point still stands you are making an assumption as to how much gold people had.
Not everyone wants to be in a guild. Many reasons for this from simply being anti social (there is nothing wrong with this personality trait despite people attempting to bully people with it) or they simply can not meet a regular raid schedule due to real life circumstances (working part time with hours that change weekly for example).
The pot doesn’t need to be huge, it just needs to cover consumes for people to carry to their main raids and maybe some pocket change. (In cases where people are not ultra sweating and using full consumes in their raids this gold could go to trade skills, alts or other expenses) Doesn’t matter, just so long as they make more gold then they would have made farming in that same time frame.
Let’s do another thought experiment. Assume that 100% of RMT is banned by blizzard and they instantly enforce their rules (bots are banned right away as are gold buyers and sellers).
Turns out that GDKPs become an EVEN BETTER loot system in a zero RMT Azeroth. Because it was never about distributing gold from buyers, it was about having the fairest loot system that incentives good play and allows players to play with many groups.
No one would use it because it doesn’t solve the issues GDKPs solve. Players still have to farm for their consumes. BiS geared toons don’t need points that are stuck on that toon, it won’t help their alts and don’t let them buy items on the AH.
I agree with you that it wouldn’t, but do you not see how that invalidates your original hypothetical?
The people profiting from GDKPs don’t care where the gold comes from. They just want to be rewarded for every single run whether that is through getting gear or getting gold.
Your hypothetical of a system where the gold disappears removes that incentive from the system, which means it is no longer GDKP and is now something else entirely. This makes your hypothetical amount to:
“Let’s do something that isn’t a GDKP system, call it the same thing, and then see if that placates the people who actually want what we aren’t giving them.”
That’s just utter nonsense and I don’t know why you would lead with such a silly hypothetical.
I don’t see any evidence that anyone in the history of the game has ever been coerced into participating in a GDKP run, let alone being coerced into spending their gold on gear during a GDKP run. This isn’t a fair or accurate portrayal of the system and there is no reason to exaggerate and invent problems with GDKP when perfectly legitimate problems exist sufficient to justify a ban.
GDKP creates perverse incentives which lead to an expectation wthin the community that every run of the content should reward them with either a bunch of gold, gear, or both. This eliminates fun and social engagement (i.e. the pleasure of helping your friends get what they need) as primary motivators for running the content which undermines traditional social and guild structures.
GDKP is an effective way for people who spend money on RMT to launder gold. Banning the practice helps Blizzard crack down on RMT.
You don’t need to create nonsensical hypotheticals to invent reasons to be opposed to GDKP. This entire thread is a waste of everyone’s time.
If this were true, after 20 years it would have become the norm, not a black market community of gold buyers and the guilds that carry them.
It is not ‘the most fair’ because the majority of people don’t think it’s “fair” to have to drop BARE MINIMUM 5g on items (30-50g on average for contested blues, 100-300g for contested purps). That’s 90g total if every item you needed had ZERO other people rolling on it. Most people are complaining that 90g is too much for a mount, that has no RNG / contests whatsoever.
Now if we are being realistic, we’d probably put that number at 5x as much. I think most players are much more likely to get their BIS running gnomer every few days and rolling on loot than they are to earn several hundred gold to buy it.
I can’t see any scenario where someone is farming a stupid amount of gold and spending it on items they can earn for free in a fraction of the time. The only people who do this are A. people who swipe, B. people who have excess gold from running with swipers.
It also becomes increasingly more important when you have static and somewhat difficult content.
Nobody cares about GDKPs when the raids are basically dungeons and consumes only cost a few gold. People start to care a lot when consumes are hundreds of gold and wiping in the raid is likely to be a lost lockout in a non-guild run.
They are much more organized than pugs, but less strict than guilds and attract BiS toons (which guilds struggle to do often) they are perfect loot system for static servers.
Get geared in other loot systems and go as a carry…
GDKPs aren’t there to gear your first toon. That is on you, either farm up hella gold or spend the time raiding with a guild, then go to GDKPs and sell your services as a carry.
Have you looked at the AH? People buy expensive BoEs all the time that are worse than raid items. GDKPs items are almost always cheaper than the BoE equivalent on the AH.
Most raids items get pretty cheap, it isn’t always expensive. If you run often you can get a lot of items for min bid and each time you run you get a cut.
If items are expensive, pots are big, if items are cheap, pots are small - the actual price of items doesn’t matter, after you run for a few weeks you can afford what you want.
I have over 500g on my toon and that’s after having purchased 2 mounts at full cost.
It’s not my fault or the fault of efficient gold grinders that broke players can’t engage in GDKP.
I ask Blizz to audit me and I actively promote Blizzard enforcing their ToS and permabanning all gold buyers/RMT’ers more actively than anyone else on these forums.
GDKP is not the problem and it never has been. The problem is gold buyers. Permaban them all.
So you’re asking for the retail equivalent of an RDF loot bag to complete your run, but with the added option to snipe a drop because you have more money, regardless of your actual contribution to the run.
1:) I always contribute to the run.
2.) I want to feel rewarded for my time invested. I do not feel rewarded when I get zero loot drops and it costs me money to raid via repairs/consumes which means it’s a net loss.
I don’t want a retail equivalent of anything. I don’t play retail for a reason.
I could counter your argument by saying that the highest DPS should be entitled to the best weapon dropping because he contributes more than the other DPS. Every other DPS that wants to roll on it are simply trying to snipe it even though they contributed less.