This 
it’s only a matter of time. You can cope but this is the truth.
Why not?
Sure.
Even though I run with a guild most times, sometimes my schedule doesn’t allow for it, and I have to PUG.
PUGing with GDKP was much less toxic, and there were way less requirements as far as parsing, 6/6ing, gear checks etc. As someone who can’t join my guild 25% of the time, my experience has been really bad on those days.
I also do not think that everyone doing GDKP was buying gold. In fact, I’m not even convinced the majority were. The most gold I saw spent was 27gold for the caster gloves in BFD. Only saw one Epic drop during my runs which was the bow and it was just given to the only Hunter in group. I’m sure epic staff bids got into crazy town territory though.
I also saw some GDKPs that tried to curb good buyers from joining their groups. They had maximum bids, and after that, the bid became a roll. For example 150gold was max bid on epics and if anybody was willing to spend the same it turned into a /roll 100. Witnessing some “ethics” further informs me that not all GDKPs were a gold buyer haven.
With GDKP you had people who made the bulk of their gold just from raiding. This made them more apt to play the game as the time invested wasn’t as stressful as farming late game quests, herbs/ore, playing the auction house etc. Everyone generally felt good leaving a raid because nobody left empty handed.
For people who cannot commit as much time to the game, and enjoyed running multiple alts through raids as their main chunk of gaming time … they have less alts they can run because of how picky PUGS are, and many stopped playing.
This has had a tremendous effect on raid participation. I think one of the reasons it feels harder to find a raid is because there’s not enough alts to go around, and funding those alts has also become that much harder.
I think GDKP had less gold buyers than people assumed. I think raiding is much more toxic now that they’re gone. I think maintaining alts is much harder now that they’re gone. I think raid participation has diminished because of it. I think this was an experiment to see how things went and so far I think the experiment needs to be reverted.
I understand this was meant to kneecap gold buying, but I think a better solution is to hit gold buyers with much harsher punishments, and to stop doing ban waves and start actively monitoring bots and ban immediately once a GM sees hacking / botting etc
In short I think banning GDKP was a worthwhile experiment, but overall it’s the lazy option and Blizz needs to invest in constant monitoring of bots , removing them, and very harsh penalties for gold buyers. Like 6 week suspensions, up to 6 months or permanent bans.
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I wouldn’t be so sure …
Not all people running GDKP were whale gold buyers. I think some people genuinely miss GDKP because they didn’t buy gold, and it was a good way to make some.
SoD devs will be monitoring the data to see how banning GDKP has affected the community, and I would not be surprised if they lifted the ban at some point, especially if it’s changed player count and engagement too much.
People tend to think everyone is a whale, but these people are a small minority of games.
You get 3 types.
Those that never buy gold.
Those that buy a little bit here and there (ie: to pay for their mount)
And whales.
I think most people fall into the first two categories, not the third.
My assumption is because gold buying is so normalized in Taiwan (and China), that it’s not even worth trying.
They experimented with NA/EU because gold buying is still somewhat taboo, even if it’s done more openly these days.
Obviously not every single person was buying gold. But every person in GDKPs is getting cuts of that gold from the Swipers. So when they fall back on ‘But I don’t buy gold!’, they’re still benefiting from those who do.
The argument I keep seeing is “But now I have no reason to keep doing raids anymore.” No offense, but if your only reason to keep running raids on alts was to reap the benefits from gold buyers, that’s not a good reason. There’s a bigger issue at hand.
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actually i’ve never bought gear at GDKP, i’m just a hard carry who enjoys raiding and wants to make gold through raiding instead of levelling a mage (which i don’t enjoy playing) to sit around and AOE farm murlocs (which I also don’t enjoy doing).
as i stated previously - this is why i enjoy GDKPs
there’s literally nothing wrong with me wanting to earn gold through raiding, so i can stick to the content that I enjoy.
it’s the same reason why pvp gear became stronger than pve gear over the years - it’s because pvp players did not want to have to raid in order to be competitive for arenas.
and i agree - allow players to do only the content they want to do - the players will be happier and the game will grow further rather than everyone quitting due to burn out.
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If you’re doing GDKPs, then you’re earning that gold from gold buyers.
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you have zero evidence of this, so you don’t have the information required to state this as a fact.
if you have any evidence to show me, sure then we can discuss that… but for now, all you have is conjecture and assumptions.
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the lead developer said GDKPs and RMT can not be separated in this thread post 1. Furthermore GDKPs contribute to the incentive for botting. Time to move on from GDKPs if you want to SoD.
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That came directly from Blizzard and they have no reason to lie about it.
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that is actually an incorrect statement - here is what the Blue post stated:
Kaivax stated that GDKP may contribute to illicit activity - there is nothing in that statement that shows everyone who engages in GDKPs also engage in illicit activity.
and i can tell you that I know all of my clientele that join my GDKPs in phase one personally, so i know they don’t buy gold.
so your statements have less than zero application to me.
the lead developer is telling you GDKPs are a giant problem and they are being banned. GDKPs will get you banned in SoD. It is time to move on if you want to play SoD.
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Thanks to this decision there are fewer players in the world. dungeons are dead. it was nice when people leveled alts for gdkp and helped others.
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It has every application to you and everyone running GDKPs. That gold cut you get comes from Swipers who bought it illegally.
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the lead developer also refused to implement a GDKP ban in taiwan.
also, the lead developer said this was just an experiment:
and it seems as though blizzard has spoken regarding this “test” by declining to implement a GDKP ban in Taiwan.
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since you have no information on this its pointless to speculate. But you can go back to one of the thriving versions of the game that allows GDKP and participate in the GDKPs that you are desperate to participate in. Its time to move on from SoD if you want to GDKP.
as i said before, you have less than zero evidence of this.
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sounds like you need to play in Taiwan since they are still banned on US and EU realms.
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for now, sure… but that policy will be revisited and it was revisited when the developers decided to not implement it in Taiwan
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