Sharp Practice: Dishonest or barely honest dealings.
The other day I was looking for a PUG raid as I am a returning player and not ready to raid with my friends yet. I queued into the LFG tool and was whispered the typical " Naxx 25 min bid 500. 1k BiS 10% host cut. LF buyers pref hybrid and carry. Fresh 80s welcome! GS?". I respond with 4K. “lmao bud I said need carry. budget?”. I say 5K, that being what I had earned from questing up to that point. I am responded to with another “lmao” then a block. That run was in the LFG tool for 4 hours at 20/25 before they either gave up or actually ran. This is a step above the old toxicity of retail WotLK.
Everyone knows this is against the spirit of the game. There is no comradery in a gdkp, nothing expected of you except to spend, and a tacit agreement to not ask how or when gold is acquired by that fresh 80 with no alts. Players are not looking for a fair loot system they’re looking for whales to hook, usually to the detriment of the whales as there’s always a plant in the raid to bid them up on every item they want. They only see all other players as bots farming gold for them.
And if this is truly what the player base wants, then you deserve all the bots. You deserve rampant inflation, you deserve every tone-deaf and out of touch decision made by Blizzard with regards to the game, and every gold farmer unable to communicate wiping your dungeon/raid runs. You have no right to complain about said issues if you engage in sharp practices. Heroic+ is the only saving grace for this game and even then ten to thirty percent of them fail. Me, I’ll just be playing with my friends, but God help anyone who tries playing this game solo without buying gold.
Preemptive response to the “Uh Spirit of the Game doesn’t exist lol.” crowd. Yes it does, ask any Chess player what’s against the spirit of the game and they can list them off for you. “But Chess and WoW are completely different games.” At that point you’re deflecting weakly.
There are tons of MS > OS runs being advertised as well as the GDKPs on our server.
Yep! We most likely have the amount of people complaining about bots on the forums that we do because there are countless more paying those bots for services and gold, etc.
We have had free transfers between Faerlina and Benediction for about a month and no change or improvement in faction balance. Given the choice to have free transfers, people would prefer to opt out of PVP on PVP servers. That’s of course just one example.
We also have people asking day and night for Retail features to be added to Classic, while still insisting they want to play Classic; just like people unironically asked for a toggle for pvp on pvp servers during WoW Classic… lol
So a couple things. I think you’re right to be frustrated by groups finding filtering out poors and non in group carries, but that those practices are just continuations of other methods. The old practice was to pay up front for a carry and split the gold amongst the carriers. Now in theory it’s a better deal for both parties, People can carry in incomplete gear and bid on items instead of them being off the table and if you don’t win anything you don’t pay anything as a carry.
All that said you cannot stop people from exploiting each other in a video game like WoW. What blizzard could and should do is actually crack down on botting. I’ve never seen an mmo since OSRS that had such a rampant and open botting problem.
Time and time again online gaming proves that players will not make the best choices for the community and instead will make the best choices for them. As a geared player working full time, if joining a GDKP means i can pay for a month of raid materials by just playing the game that’s the obvious choice. I and many people don’t have the time we did in highschool to farm mats all day (as if competing with bots there would be worth it) the bans have to come from blizzard, the inflation is from gold being created afterall, mostly by bots.
Unfortunately though i don’t think banning bots or GDKPs will solve the first issue. WoW is a social game, there are in groups and out groups and if you want to benefit from that you need to find and in group (a guild or community discord) or make one.
(Also are H+ pugs really failing 30% of the time? That seems very harsh)
I understand that there are legitimate gold farmers and I believe that should be a valid way of playing the game. If someone can’t manage the mechanics for a raid but can just farm dalies, more power to them to pay a guild for a carry. The way I internalize that in terms of an RPG is a merchant paying adventurers to walk them through a dungeon. I’ve paid for an Ahead of the Curve carry for a mount before with gold I farmed in WoD.
I also agree that banning bots and GDKP won’t solve the problem mainly because their effects are still left over. The only true way would be complete server resets, but that’s what fresh is for.
I would like to believe that it wasn’t this bad when I was 12 but it probably was. It’s just the sheer narcissism hypocrisy on display now that bothers me. The most common response is “Lol poor” when I just understand the pointlessness of spending more money than I have to on pixels to have fun.
H+ pugs are more on the 15% end, but you would be surprised how many people still don’t kill webs in AN/ToK or move the mobs out of the pools in Gundrak.
The bots and subsequent inflation that comes with them as a result of rmt for gdkp runs greatly affects my ability to farm materials, craft for a profit, and flip AH items.
The cost of products goes up with the amount of gold on the server however the gold you make also increases at the same rate.
Inflation would only be a reason if the gold you made never increased with the amount of gold on the server.
For instance if the only way you could make gold was say dailies and since dailies are a set value no matter how much things cost then you would feel inflation.
However dailies are the worst way to make gold and the lowest gold per hour.
Inflation literally doesn’t exist in an MMO because the way we make gold is always increasing with the cost of everything on the server.
Also gdkps don’t cause inflation, they don’t create gold.
The leader wanted carries (so people in at least p1 bis or better) and hybrids (so people with decent enough gear who are just after a few crucial items).
Since you weren’t either, no reason to take you if the leader doesn’t think your budget is worthwhile.
You literally just replied back previously when I asked how it was an issue for you that people you don’t know are doing gdkps and you said “inflation”.
And now you’re saying I’m the person who can’t read lmfao?
Cant really blame people for doing GDKP more than the other loot systems considering GDKP is the better loot system if you’re gonna pug. Theyre faster, far more efficient and everyone leaves with something at the end of the raid.
Check your server discord for SR or other loot rules runs then? Trade chat and lfg will always be filled to the brim with GDKP’s at prime time so it might be difficult to even notice the non-GDKP pugs.
On the contrary I think it’s in line with the spirit of the game, people make communities around doing GDKP’s, people have and make friends in them exactly what you’d expect by being a regular in any other raid format.
How do they know that they’ve only got one level 80? There’s no way to know, If I put 10k on my rogue when I get it to 80 and do GDKP’s, would you think that I bought that gold knowing nothing else about me?
GDKP is the most fair loot system outside of a nepotismless loot council. In a GDKP, everyone gets something, you use gold to purchase items in what is essentially an auction and if you don’t buy anything you get gold so that you can get something in the next run.
There are people that bid just to raise the price but I highly doubt that they’re plants, they just want more gold from the pot.
Kinda do or die there in that rant aren’t you…
You honestly come across as someone that doesn’t do GDKP’s, doesn’t have anyone you talk to that does GDKP’s and just doesn’t really understand them. You see that GDKP’s use gold as the way people get items, link it to bots, RMT and say GDKP’s are bad for the game.
If you want to know what the best PuG’s are for mechanic knowledge and general player skill then you should be joining a GDKP’s, they’re generally leagues above other PuG’s.
On the contrary I think it’s in line with the spirit of the game, people make communities around doing GDKP’s, people have and make friends in them exactly what you’d expect by being a regular in any other raid format.
Just because people violate the spirit of the game in a group that doesn’t suddenly make it in the spirit of the game.
How do they know that they’ve only got one level 80?
I ask if they’re new to the game or server.
GDKP is the most fair loot system outside of a nepotismless loot council.
Opinion
You honestly come across as someone that doesn’t do GDKP’s, doesn’t have anyone you talk to that does GDKP’s and just doesn’t really understand them. You see that GDKP’s use gold as the way people get items, link it to bots, RMT and say GDKP’s are bad for the game.
Why would I do something that has a negative effect on the game? And no, I had guildmates in BC that openly admitted to “swiping” for boosts and gdkp because they saw it as the only way to compete on a mega server. I understand how they work and what they complained about after every run. They were never banned and at least they were honest about what they were doing.
The kind of stuff that really bothers me are people with poor impulse control who try to defend and justify their bad behavior.
And I already know the response, “Well just because they did it doesn’t mean that it’s as bad as you say.”
You players just come out of the woodwork and expose yourself just to defend sharp practices.