[Classic] SoD - third time's a charm - putting a halt to GDKP in SoD to prevent bots

[Yumuros-thunderlord]

Similar Topics on the forums

Putting the Discussion forward here, there are a couple of threads in the forum on the topic already:

Ban GDKPs in SoD Please, Actively Ban Bots & Gold Sellers/Buyers

The economy in Classic is everything, asking Blizzard to ensure things are going to be handled properly. Banning GDKPs would be the first step towards reducing the RMT in classic.

GDKP "laundering" and massive inflation is already occurring on SoD, as predicted. Bots/exploits, etc

With bots running amok en masse (literally just open your eyes in the game and look around), we’re already seeing massive inflation on the marketplace for items and as more people are starting to hit 25 we are also seeing GDKP groups and GDKP bands/statics start to form. GDKP is a blatant form of cleaning/laundering gold and clearly promotes RMT. Exploitative farming of high level mobs is also happening for massive gold advantage. I’ve seen green pieces on the AH for 25-30g and beyond. I’ve oc…

Make sure gdkps are bannable moving forward

Gdkp is a good system with gold that people earn, but thats never the case. You get cuts of botted gold and pretend like its not a problem. Make gdkps bannable in SoD please

Author Note: In a perfect world GDKP would work, but with bots it doesn’t - Those threads kinda already print the picture. In this thread I try to give a better context to it and how it could be handled accordingly.

Introduction

I may sound like a broken Record here (as I communicated my stance on this couple of times here and received backlash from GDKP Lovers), but Bots benefit from GDKP being a thing, therefore it should be disabled (more on that later on). Since the Start of WoW Classic we have a big problem with bots in the game.

How we ended up here

This Problem has been multiplied by the introduction of GDKP Groups and resulted in its current high in WotlK Classic with items being sold for over 300k Gold in some Groups. Overall we have on some era and wrath servers more GDKP Raiding then normal Raid Groups, so players were tricked into buying gold to be active in raiding as you weren’t able to keep up with the prices just from doing dailies etc. . This increased the incentive for gold selling websites to flood the game with more bots, as it became a good business model. Instead of addressing this issue, the classic team gave up on combating bots (my personal view on it) and put in their own gold selling in form of the wow token and stated they can’t do anything about it.

Esp. in classic GDKP are tempting due to the larger scale of groups and the less likelihood of getting items out of a 40-man raid group - GDKP skips the social loot distribution and gives items to the whales.

For more context on this topic:

The Gold Selling Underworld of Classic WoW is Terrible...

This Video kinda shows how GDKP on a larger scale operate and why bots are so lucrative to run in classic wow due to GDKP’s being a thing.

GDKP’s have been around since the original Version of WoW in 2004, yet they hadn’t the impact back then they now have on the game economy, with bots being more prevalent (and also more effective than 19 years ago) and being an attractive business model for shady gold selling sites.

Third time's a Charm

With Season of Discovery being very young, why not explore and discover how the game would work without GDKP and what impact it would have on Bots. In Era and Wrath you couldn’t combat bots effectively but what if the most likely reason ppl buy gold isn’t present in the game ?

Let us explore together if Bots and Gold Buying would drop - Classic doesn’t have huge gold sinks besides GDKP’s. With them being not a thing, most player wouldn’t be tempted into gold buying.

How this could be handled

• Firstly, disable Gold Trades inside Raid Instance.

• Secondly, you would need to make items bound upon leaving the instance, as this ensure it just don’t happen outside the raid.

• Now put a debuff on players called “Raider Mentality” (This Player currently came from a Raid and isn’t willing to trade right now) which is active for 1 hour account wide upon defeating a raid boss. This will disable gold trades to prevent GDKP’s from working effectively after a raid concluded.

• More drastic → make GDKP’s a prohibit form of raiding also. This may go a tad too hard, but GDKP has been involved in RMT as Gold became not a relevant trading resource outside the game for GDKP Managements, so Patrons and Discord Ranks have been abused to sell spots on GDKP’s for Real Money.

While this doesn’t totally block the chance of GDKP’s happening, they will be less present than now and the no longer present dire need for Gold would have a halt to them (Botting).

On a further note, stop working with Content Creators who promoted this System (may it be by streaming it)

[Azelon-stormrage]

@Yumuros-thunderlord

Now put a debuff on players called “Raider Mentality” (This Player currently came from a Raid and isn’t willing to trade right now) which is active for 1 hour account wide upon defeating a raid boss.

Is 1 hour enough? I think such debuff should be active for 24 hours to be more effective.

[Safeguard-garrosh]

While I share the sentiment of OP, 24 hours is a lot, especially since there are people who mostly raidlog. Not being able to trade for 24 hours is pretty meh. But it should at the very least cover any trading windows.

[Vicara-moon-guard (Vicara)]

There will always be ways around things that people will do. Debuffs, disabling trading and banning GDKPs are all just things that can harm normal players playing the game. The source of the problem must be dealt with for an actual solution: ban people buying gold permanently. Let there be steep punishments for buying gold and people will be a lot less likely to buy gold. If people don’t want to buy gold from the risk of their account being banned then gold selling will become a lot less of an issue.

[Yumuros-thunderlord]

@Vicara-moon-guard

The source of the problem must be dealt with for an actual solution: ban people buying gold permanently

…and here it gets tricky - how can you tell who bought gold? - You simply no longer can, let me explain why:

In the Real world, it is common practice to wash money that is involved with robbery and other crimes. The Villain will run a small business or company to inject money of actual crimes into the normal ecosystem. This will put the police and other authorities off the track and makes it nearly impossible to catch the source of the money flow or the receiving end.

In World of Warcraft we as players introduced our own small businesses and companies (willingly and unwillingly) to assist washing the money (gold) of such illegal activities such as botting. The MetaGoblin Video I linked in the Post doesn’t go totally into the details (as it would be a blueprint for others to replicate the process) but it shows how the gold is distributed to the gold buyer: as a GDKP Cut. GDKP is not only where PPL spent their Gold, it is at the same time an effective way for botters to inject gold into the ecosystem and put blizzard off the track.

@Vicara-moon-guard

If people don’t want to buy gold from the risk of their account being banned, then gold selling will become a lot less of an issue.

In an ideal world this would totally work but given the circumstance GDKP is involved into this process and being the primary source where players would spend gold it is a much easier and efficient way to remove a tool of the actual gold selling chain to expose not only the gold buyer but also the bot distributing its gold. GDKP has been proven to be a great shield as giant amount of gold gets thrown left and right that you would barely notice botting gold among it.

@Vicara-moon-guard

There will always be ways around things that people will do. Debuffs, disabling trading and banning GDKPs are all just things that can harm normal players playing the game.

There will always be ways and I didn’t neglect it but given the track record GDKP has in this process (it is actually involved into RMT and Gold Selling) in Era and Wrath Classic we should know better by now. The Debuff would be barely noticeable by most players as it only disables gold trades for a set amount of time. A ban of GDKP would harm fewer players than simply allowing it and ruin server economies. It would also directly hit the ppl that buy gold, as the solo gold sink that requires huge amount of gold is now gone in the game.

[Savagerune-mannoroth]

So, I am in the world of high end raiding in retail and have been for a long time and a causal enjoyer of classic raiding, I cap I clear the raid a few times and then just play some alts etc so I never really ventured into the world of GDKP but IRL I am a game designer, specifically data engineering and balance.

My high-end retail experience tells me that these solutions suggested will not deter people to stop GDKP, they are just inconveniences

1. Trade the gold outside the instance
2. Trade the items inside the instance
3. Wait an hour
4. Good luck policing that

What I think is important is looking to the past GDKP existed in 2008 (Weak Source but Drama Time Season One worth a listen very funny)

But GDKP in Cata, MoP and Wod the idea never really took off. Eventually in early legion boosting communities took off and that’s a different story. But we need to examine why it never took off.

My potential ideas are

• Character based lockouts meant your loot chances were not based on the one group you join that falls apart after killing the first boss
• The increase in availability of gold

I am playing on an RP server in SoD (friends wanted too) and the best take I heard was “Gold is cannon therefore GDKP is RP”. Since gold is a constant form of currency and has lots of value with limited sources in these earlier expansions its going to be nearly impossible to remove these since its a community driven issue (though not helped by the WoW token)