Somebody said this already but to reiterate it seems like inflation is actually good (though not when caused by botting).
Nobody’s on a fixed income, but there are things in the game with fixed costs like repair bills and mounts. If copper is really selling for 5g a stack, then a casual player can buy his epic mount with a few hours of copper farming. It took…a BIT more than that back in the day.
This is an over simplification and idiotic nonsense.
The wow economy is dictated mostly by what the top raiders are willing to pay for crafting materials and consumables. When you have bots taking most of the herbs and nodes, then it’s hard for people to farm their own materials for personal use or to sell to people doing end game content. Eventually the more casual players would like to get into the more competitive raiding but are met with outrageous AH prices on basic consumables because everything is over inflated due to RMT pouring into the GDKP runs. This is why you have things like mongoose at 20g per or plaguebloom at 110g a stack. Everything else goes up according, even things like copper bars because people will pay to level engineering from 1 to 300 if they want it.
If GDKPs only affect the players in those runs that would be fine but that is not the case. The GDKP gold generation outpaces every single other method of farming in the game by a massive margin, making doing any of those things not worth it. It also has people who want raid consumes for Naxx or the like to just dump hundreds of gold into things regardless of their cost because they don’t want to do any farming at all.
It becomes “Do GDKPs hyperinflated by RMT or struggle to afford to do any raiding at all …oh and your professions are mostly worthless now and you’ll realize this if you calculate the gold per hour saved by doing them vs a single GDKP”
In VANILLA WoW (and TBC) all you had to do was mention buying gold to get flagged. “Hello Such and such…” The GMs used to actually talk to and even appear before players. GDKP? Hah. Different GAME. Not REMOTELY what it is now. I think someone in this thread actually questioned gold buying with cash. You’d be insta-banned, and yes they were good at nailing people. Guildies were dropping off in TBC. Cash transactions happened, and some people got busted and some got away with it, but it was enforced.
So, now…
Massively, Lots of Gold, from botters, runners, whoever (unlike “willie” I don’t need to judge the source precisely) know how to make it from game mechanics…massively (clearly not alone, in groups, tens to hundreds of thousands of gold a week, distributed repeatedly) --> Buyers who purchase Lots of Gold for cash $ --> Lots of Gold filtered / redistributed enough times through GDKP to the point where performing actual game mechanics (such as the AH, farming mats or actually raiding where there is no gambling involved) become downright stupid… --> Congratulations! Lots of Gold has just evolved into Lots More Gold while Blizzard turns a blind eye. Come again! Big wallets wanted! WoW went pay to play back in Mists, I think. You’ve got your level boost for TBC. I’m sure that’ll be isolated. And if Activision isn’t talking a WoW token for TBC, well that’s on them.
yes
eh, not so far as i am aware.
The GDKP market works because it has a reliable source of income.
That source of income is gold provided by the “community” which can be farmed but, unfortunately, also consists of third parties who sell gold to people who do not want to farm anymore.
GDKP organizers will take that gold without asking any questions and they benefit from it because they’re not cheating by buying the gold themselves. They’re essentially accepting handouts from players who are.
GDKP runs are great for bots, however. GDKP organizers are essentially money-launderers. Through GDKP, the bots accounts have a means of recycling gold where regular Players are used as as a proxy.
The way players will try to earn gold and remain competitive is to rely on GDKP runs. They will do this regardless of the fact that GDKP indirectly keeps bot system up and running. Here’s how the current system works:
Bots have major influence over the gold market. If you’re buying Black Lotus, Plaguebloom, Arcane Cystals, Golden Pearls, or whatever else you need, you won’t have any clue as to whom you’re buying your stuff from. Is it a bot or is it a real player?
Unfortunately the AH does not allow you to vet anyone putting stuff on the AH. Moreover, anyone can create an alt and place stuff on the AH without drawing any attention to their mains. Nevertheless, people continue to pay for things on the AH with their gold, regardless of who the seller is.
After you’ve paid for an item on the AH, where does that gold go?
If it’s a bot, the gold goes to the bot. The bot can then trade it to other players in exchange for real-world money. The bought gold is then spent on any number of things, but key of which is GDKP items.
Anyone remember the guy who spent 198k for Gressil? Of course you do!
So, after the GDKP run has been concluded, the gold everyone paid is then pooled and distributed. But where does it go next? Naturally, it be used to buy more things on the AH which have been farmed by bots.
And the cycle continues…
Here’s what this looks like more simplified:
Bots farm mats (Black Lotus, Plaguebloom, etc)
GDKP Raiders spend gold to buy mats from Bots
Bots sell gold to Player A
Player A uses gold they just bought to bid on items in GDKP Raid
GDKP Raiders walk away with lots of gold
GDKP Raiders spend gold on mats
and those mats were farmed by Bots…
The problem with the community isn’t bots. It’s players who are taking other players’ gold without question because it benefits them to do so. It’s like saying, “I’m not cheating. I’m just paid by those who do cheat.”
And people will excuse themselves from any fault by saying things like, “Hey, how am I supposed to know where the gold is coming from?!”
As if they weren’t going to accept a payout either way.
Moreover, the Gehennas Server example with the 198,000g payout for Gressil shows that the people running GDKPs do NOT care about their community. They really only care about stocking their wallets.
Every “normie” who is trying to play the game according to Blizzard’s rules is getting screwed by GDKP.
GDKP is intrinsically tied to gold buying and denying it is hilarious.
I prefer the roll system. So what if I didn’t get something this week?
The original Warglaives were the first artifact weapons that could even be combined, worn by GMs. Many GMs were players as well. During TBC raid testing, they would appear together and spawn all sorts of enemies.
Very well described and you are on the money. I received all my items via my guild. However, many of them were active in GDKPs with their alts. The copious amounts of gold being bid after the raids by players in fresh level 30 greens, for instance, would toss out gold for items that sometimes proved they didn’t even know their classes. And carriers would laugh and giggle in guild chat as they urged buyers to bid more of the $ bought gold they knew they had. It is a joke to argue these players are buying items for thousands and thousands of gold without spending some $. Days of DM runs? Give me a break. Players may have thousands of gold now legitimately earned after hours and days and weeks of farming…but you are a fool if you spend all that time for a petty item or two. The truth is people in GDKPs straight up buy gold or get it through carrying and support the botting community. GDKP is in the laundering cycle, and is so rampant that gold sellers can’t keep up. I’d go as far as to say that any part of the laundering cycle is as bad as any other part. Bots generate gold. GDKPs both generate AND distribute gold quickly. Many carriers in GDKPs are selling gold for RMT. Believe it. The whole cycle is a mess. WoW is pay to play. Instilling tokens will actually mitigate some of the punishment the game is getting by both bots and carriers. TBC is going to be a cluster.
how do you know?
I’m in my thirties and have played since the beginning. It is mainly because the economies of pretty much every populated server right now have been jacked with an outpouring of gold the likes of which “Classic” has never seen. Not even close. GDKPs with geared carriers is pointless without the hogs. Why spend the time, effort and possibly consumables? People say the game was always like this. As I recall, there was a picture taken of a famous mage who managed to get the AQ mount and Atiesh, and he had around 3K gold in his bags. Then, that was a remarkable amount. People still farmed for long periods and gold buying existed, but was punished. The outlier here is the element of GDKP. Personally, I saw bots. I witnessed guildies banned for gold buying. But I never saw GDKPs go down, or mention of gold for run transactions (let alone real world cash for runs or items). I’m sure it happened here or there. But every day, you can log into a densely populated server and see GDKPs being advertised. Pugs alone weren’t quite up to speed. Its like comparing America now to America in 1800. Sure there was a Constitution, but it hadn’t been amended a million times. A lot of people wanted that 1800 experience. Some GDKP buyers can get their bidding gold from GDKPs themselves. Who in their right mind, knowing the game, would farm thorium and plaguebloom all day and night wouldn’t when you can just GDKP your weekly quota for consumes and then some? I’m mining and herb on a large server. Gold is precious to me, and takes time to gather and process onto the AH. Gear is also precious, and without sufficient gold, or running GDKPs, I’d rely on an honest guild for it. I’ve put in over a year in Classic time now, and have seen people gear up to my level almost instantaneously. I see these people wandering around, a piece or two off from me because they haven’t ditched their level 40 ring or cloak from Mara boost runs (yet), having nothing enchanted. People who log in one or two days a week just to GDKP. GDKP carriers can save up their GDKP money over time, absolutely, but there will always be “pure buyers.” A lot if not most of GDKP organizers will check the amount of gold a pure buyer has before the run. And even GDKP carriers will occasionally want gear, and without having the copious amount of gold they are sure "pure buyers" have, they are not beyond purchasing gold with real world money themselves in an attempt to compete with them. The truth is “pure buyers” are rampant on larger servers and GDKPs rely on these buyers because it nets them lots of gold. They’ll horde the gold from the hog that was split, and maybe get involved in the gambling next run. Even so, what GDKP do you know that is simply an honest group of people bidding against each other? Name one. That’s what honest raiders do, and instead of losing all their gold foolishly they just roll if gambling is their thing. GDKP is for buyers, and GDKP carriers are out for their gold. GDKP can’t go on and on with the same people without a hog buyer. Eventually they’d all just be wasting time on raids like AQ40, where no one needs any gear anymore, and fizz out. GDKPs are anything but fizzing out. There is a reason GDKPs >>> Soft res. I don’t think I’ve even seen an AQ40 or Naxx Soft res at all on my server. You don’t have to be a mathematician to know that this GDKP gambling system requires a lot of gold being pumped constantly into the economy from non-GDKP sources (sources that have tens of thousands to spend every week, big old buyers boosting five characters and gearing them in Naxx gear in no time).
mk so you would have been able to come up with a credible source in that time maybe?
So how am I sure that people in GDKPs straight up buy gold?
First, from simple observation. I’ve seen guildies and others out of the gate in Classic buying gold from foreign farmers who knew Vanilla like the back of their hands. Some sellers I’m sure originated in Vanilla. GDKP started ramping up right away in Molten Core. Sales of attunements, boosting and Molten Core items started there. When I compare the money I witnessed then to the amount of gold being spent now, there is a huge rift. 100g might cost as much as 50 to a hundred bucks on an RMT site then. Now, you can get 5K for the same amount, only the demand is greater and even RMT sources can’t keep up with the demand…not with a thousand active bots. So first, when you observe this amount of gold thrown down on the table in Stormwind week after week, and the fact my hours and hours of farming mats don’t accumulate a tenth of the GDKP payout, you know the hogs are getting full on RMT in order to keep up. They aren’t logging in. They aren’t farming. They are buying gold. And they are feeding the vicious cycle.
Next, GDKPs are not real gold generators. The second reason I know people in GDKPs buy gold is because GDKPs are not real gold generators. The gold tossed around in GDKPs has an origin other than GDKP. Or did at some point. Lots of gold. The GDKP runners are the end product, not the origin. The hogs paying big money aren’t the origin. You need pumpers… Guilds full of farmers or a bunch of bots that generate gold around the clock and have the ability to dominate the AH and set prices. Up and up they go, and “honest” players either buy in or have to work hours longer. On my server, I have not seen a single Black Lotus after days and days of farming the appropriate regions personally. A bunch of Arcane Crystals, but the nodes were being farmed heavily as well. The original buyers in a GDKP had gold enough to substantiate both being carried and buying items, and the buyers would have to either pay the guild or, more likely, compete against one or more other players for gear the carrying guild might actually want for themselves. Maybe GDKPs started honestly with self-farmed gold you ask? Getting into cutting edge encounters cost a good amount of gold, amounts to substantiate hard work and possibly sacrifice (think Bindings at the start of Classic). Guilds required “deep pockets” (terms commonly thrown around), and buyers were opting to spend gold rather than do the work on their own. Finding a guild and running with them. Buying consumes. Taking time to get world buffs. For all of this, you needed to pay well. Lots of Gold. For all the time it would take to farm such Lots of Gold, it’d be easier to join a raiding guild and perform your role. There are all sorts of available guilds that don’t GDKP at all you can join, but they are being eclipsed now by full GDKP guilds who find the same buyers with such deep pockets. Who spend gold seemingly limitlessly, putting minimal time in. So that is the second reason I know people in GDKPs buy gold. GDKPs themselves are not a real gold source. The buyer can opt to consume and consume without putting any work at all back into the economy. The real gold source comes from the worker bees. Bots and guilds farming on a massive scale over large periods of time. So, unable or not wanting to raid, the GDKP buyer pays in in an amount that these “worker bees” define as fair to them. They aren’t doing the work. They have to buy it. Those in GDKPs who want instant gratification have to pay the price. And the only ones who can provide the amount of gold it takes to buy hot items are RMT. You get your Lots of Gold from RMT. Like I said…sure, GDKP buyers may be GDKP carriers, but the amounts being thrown around (now in Naxx especially) originate from RMT. So this statement was general, but I’d wager it’d be very difficult to track down a GDKP that isn’t carrying a piggy gold buyer who bought gold in cold hard cash to feed the ravenous raid. So, first from observing the GDKP trade and how much money is being funneled around and secondly from acknowledging the fact GDKP is not a real source of WoW gold and instead of sourcing it requires it, I feel I can certainly ascertain that people in GDKPs, straight up, purchase gold for real money to pay their way up the WoW ladder.
TL;DR 1) It can be observed, 2) GDKPs aren’t a source of gold, and instead of being a source of gold the system demands it. Thus, it requires a hook up to a gold pipeline.
In essence: Gold source (Guilds or bots) --> Gold Buyer --> GDKP --> Gold Source (Rank 2; 3; 4… (Inflation due to abuse))
GDKPs have relied on gold buyers since the beginning. I’d like to see your source that GDKPs DO NOT rely on players who purchase gold. How do you know they DON’T? I think that’d be much more difficult.
There we go. Fixed that for you. 
Thanks.
LOL. Did Jayden say buying gold was OK too? I need to look back. I’m older, and back in “classical” times, you’d be banned for gold buying. People blame bots and gold buying now. While they are bad, GDKP is a visible perpetrator. You can see people all over trade promoting it, and it is toxic and inflating markets. Why raid when you can GDKP? GDKP offers thousands of gold in an hour. Gold gets you everything…including real life cash. There are real GDKP runners selling their surplus of “GDKP-earned” gold for cash on Discord. You better believe it. GDKP, all over this game, is the most destructive thing going on right now.
that doesnt make it a fact
How has blizzard not banned this practice yet? Must be that they just don’t care anymore?!?!?!
You demonstrate for me how gold (in 40 mans, which is what I’m looking at) isn’t purchased RMT somewhere in a GDKP of said 40 man. How do you know? lol. It couldn’t be more obvious. I tried to explain how it is so obvious. You can see it, and the gold being thrown around (in 40 mans, which is what I am referencing) is not a real gold source. Many, many farmers of gold are the source. You have to consider that GDKPs are no source for gold, and yet the same players (I guess you want me to prove that too) are GDKPing every week. Most, observed, logging in once or twice a week spending thousands, tens of thousands of gold. Regularly. Any GDKP needs pure buyers. Somewhere in the pipeline pure buyers are getting gold out of purchased gold OR GDKPs where gold was purchased from farmers to split amongst the raid. I shouldn’t have to prove something blatantly obvious, but I’ll allow that there might be a 2-3 percent margin of error where pure buyers don’t buy their gold from RMT. I’ll give you a tiny margin of error. But just so your brain can understand my initial statement: The truth is, generally speaking, people in GDKPs (fueling them) straight up buy gold from RMT. The amount of gold pure buyers spend fuels 40 man GDKPs, and without them GDKPs wouldn’t be as rampant as they are right now or wouldn’t exist. I hope I have explained this enough for you to understand my initial statement.
Yeah Derk. Sadly, its so bad that people can actually get on the forums and discuss buying gold for money without any punitive repose (I believe the OP mentioned “buying some gold from frineds”). Since that crap Warcraft movie, Chris Metzen leaving, and Activision purchasing Blizzard, WoW is just a rabbit-hole market for addicts repeating the same thing over and over with subtle changes from expansion to expansion that are usually changed back (like reforging in Mists) as soon as they are made. I’m the worst perpetrator, but I did enjoy TBC out of any other expansion. There are gold moguls who will be transferring tens of thousands of gold and their carried characters onto TBC servers. Blizzard rarely takes punitive action. The problems with GDKP are just as glaringly obvious as gold buying or botting, and I would say GDKPs are just as bad as either of them. Would botting and RMT still exist without GDKP? Take the GDKP away, and the botting and RMT just regenerate, because there will always be a demand for easy gear AND gold. RMT and botting are like branches on the GDKP tree. Prune them, and GDKP still exists. But say they were taken away, they would naturally grow back, because there is always a demand for that instant gratification gold and gear that only GDKP provides. Take away the GDKP, the tree wilts, and RMT and botting are greatly weakened. Punitive measures are needed here! Trade chat would not be this constant spam for GDKP opportunities on medium to large servers should GDKP become punitive. GDKP is just the newest addition to the cancerous WoW pay-to-play, instant gratification pipeline. Lots of gold farmers and botters --> Gold buyers $$$ --> GDKP split --> Gold split back into economy --> Lots of gold farmers and botters, getting extra gold now from the trickle down from GDKP split AH transactions. So: farmer --> buyer --> GDKP --> farmer to be short. GDKP also promotes having (specifically) a mage alt to mitigate how much you’d have to spend in a GDKP after a RMT. It really demonstrates how true it is that people in GDKPs do buy with RMT gold, because of the time investment you would need to spend so much as 5-10K on one single item. And lots of people are gearing multiple toons, spending the same amount. That says a lot. And a 5K split is average these days. Across alts, where is all this money being generated? GDKP doesn’t generate it, as I pointed out above, but some people main in their guild just to go buy items on their alts over and over. You should not require an alt to be on the cutting edge in this game, but you really do. Personally, I don’t feel we should. I could write another dissertation on the problems with GDKP easily. Bottom line is that I get ya. How has Blizzard not banned this practice yet? Because so many people are doing it, and Blizzard wants $ over honoring those people who want to play without having to pay to keep up.
youre the one who originally claimed
i mean im sure its a possibility that some players buy gold, but without any proof your point is anecdotal