GDKP - The Correct Way To Think About Them

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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Whether you love them or hate them, GDKP are a constant topic of debate. Blizzard went so far as to ban them in Season of Discovery, and I question how deep they’ve gone into the analysis of this issue?

I haven’t heard good arguments from either side. Both sides either rely on how they feel, their opinions, or the gold buying market (which was a thing before GDKP existed).

Nobody thinks about this topic correctly.

Has anyone asked why? Why are GDKP so popular? Why are they so controversial? In particular, what is it about the game Blizzard made that makes GDKP such an effective tool?

Listen up. Requiring 40 people to get together at the same time and commit 2-3 hours, without breaks, is a huge ask. Those 40 people have to all know what they’re doing, or 2-3 hours will turn into 5-6 hours real quick, and then fall apart into a waste of everyone’s time. Someone also has to organize all this, which is a ton of work.

Originally, the way to solve this problem was DKP. DKP is not a good economy. Nobody uses it any more. Loot council was the next step, which is great for teams of people who stick together to accomplish a greater goal…but asking ~50 people (including subs) to stick together for months or longer is a HUGE ask, and there is still going to be a good amount of favoritism involved, and people move on, etc.

GDKP solves many problems. Let’s just put gold-buying aside for now, it’s an unrelated problem. Let’s imagine GDKP in a vacuum where bots and such don’t exist.

What GDKP does is create a market, supply and demand. It also creates incentive for people to do all that work required to organize and run everything. It also creates opportunity for players to work toward a realistic goal. Anyone can spend time farming gold, and can then join a GDKP as a buyer and get carried. This allows them to not only get gear, but also learn how to raid, and eventually become carries themselves. In other words, it feeds into and builds the community of players that are capable of raiding end game content.

The other paths toward this are progression guilds, which are VERY hard to build, join and keep running, because while 1 person may be motivated, it’s really tough to keep a group of 50 people motivated, hungry and consistent - and those guilds are not usually looking for “newbie who wants to get into raiding” applicants.

In the world of 40 man top tier raiding, GDKP is a necessity for the health of the game.

If you want to get rid of GDKP, then you need to solve the problem in a different way, by changing the way the game works.

Example 1: Make the end-game content accessible to groups of 10, MAXIMUM. Why? Because it’s a lot easier to get 10 friends together and keep them together than 50. Would GDKP still exist if the max raid size was 10? Probably, but it would be a lot less popular, because many groups would rather just put their 10 together and make it happen.

Example 2. Create some other incentive based economic system, built into the game mechanics, that would create the same type of market. Easier said than done, but it basically looks the same as GDKP addons, except the reward for those running the raid isn’t gold, it’s something else, and the rewards are based on having some kind of balance between carries and “buyers” in the raid.

There are more ways to solve the problem, but solve problem you MUST if you want to get rid of GDKP. Simply “ban” them is not a solution.

Here’s the tldr;

Humas are always going to create structures to solve problems. GDKP is simply that, a structure to solve a problem. And it WORKS! Back when classic started, there was a 0% chance you could down Naxx without dedicating your life to a guild, and even then only the most no-life of no-life guilds (like, 50 people with no life) would succeed.

Today, with GDKP, I can casually hop into Naxx once every 3 or 4 weeks, no commitment, because there are going to be a people incentivized to keep those things running and organized when I’m not there, which is a great thing.

PSA

If you’re going to argue, that’s fine, but I suggest coming up with how YOU would solve the problems that GDKP solves. If you offer complaints without solutions, you are not useful to the conversation!

Otherwise, if you think that the only people who should be able to do end game content are those who can find another 49 similarly dedicated people wiling to commit inordinate amounts of time from their lives to play a game, well, that is an opinion you are allowed to have, but you will be in the minority…and I’d also argue that is not a good business plan for a video game company.

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I agree that 10 man raiding would really help GDKP from being a thing. Part of the reason I won’t raid on Era is that trying to get 40 people for a raid team feels exhausting. Even 30-ish people sounds horrible. I barely even raid on retail-- I prefer mythic dungeons, because those can be done with a smaller group.

But GDKP isn’t a thing on retail because flexible raid size enables pugging on a super simple level. Your theory that 10 man raiding could cut down heavily on GDKP isn’t just a theory-- it’s proven. Some people (like me) don’t want a consistent raid team. We want to pug on our times, our terms. I like to be able to go out on Friday/Saturday nights and hang out with people IRL. Finding people to raid with on Saturday morning is impossible on a guild schedule-- but not on a pug schedule.

GDKP is the classic solution to a problem that retail has already solved, and if we want to kill GDKP, we have to kill set raid sizes.

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Stop the cap.

Imagine GDKP in a vacuum? No. I stop there.

Getting 40 people together is hard, organizing it is complicated, sometimes you wipe on progression, and you may end the night not clearing content, sometimes loot drops and you lose it to other raiders and you try again next lock out.

THIS. IS. THE. GAME.
ITS AN MMORPG. THATS THE GENRE.

if you want ALL epics and all the loot, you have retail. You dont want to worry about farming gold, go to retail where you have dailies etc.

you people who want this are using GDKP to bypass all the core aspects of the game. You dont have time to farm for gold, you insist on collecting every single peice of gear available in the game, you cannot fathom not getting the item you want. Then when you have all the purples you dont want to play anymore.

What is that mentality?

Ask yourself a serious question. Why? Why are you playing wow. What are you getting out of it.

What it sounds like to me, is a bunch of people who have out grown this genre of game. You have no time for it. Lots of us are not kids anymore. We have jobs, families and other responsibilities. We cant grind on this 20 year old game anymore. Thats fine. Just walk away.

But instead you insist on buying gold. Yes, these are the same people buying who want GDKP. these runs by the nature of how they operate create an arms race. If you want an item, you need more and more and more gold to outbid people. So you buy more gold to buy more gear. It never ends.

Im also done with these B.S. talking points about the AH being shutdown because of illicit gold. People are not buying gold to buy BoE gear off AH in the same volume.

It is disingenuous to act like GDKP raids are not the number one factor in driving gold buying.

And for you enablers who do not buy gold, but benefit from the pots, you are part of the issue with the hacking and botting. You are taking welfare handouts of gold, its disgusting.

I love world of warcraft, and you players who do this make the game i love and enjoy look like a bootleg pay2win korean grinder.

I hate it. I hope they keep it banned forever and apply the ban to ERA servers.

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The “problems” with GDKP are derived from misplaced blame. RMT is what people always point to, but RMT is its own problem and will continue to exist whether or not GDKP does. GDKP is about as close to a perfect loot system as you can get.

If Blizzard wanted to create a better experience for players they would actually invest in dealing with the RMT/bot problem. But they don’t. They just want :dollar: :moneybag: :dollar:

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Ok, I’ll bite. Let’s address the separate issue of gold-buying.

I’m also going to accept your premise that GDKP increases the incentive to buy gold, so the problems are somewhat related.

Using analysis again: Why is it worth it for people to spend $ to participate in end-game content or get end-game loot? Well, because they can’t do it otherwise, or the time cost to do it otherwise is too great. Meaning we have a game design problem.

This is why hypothetically separating the problems is a good way to discuss. I want to know your answer to this question: If it were 1) impossible to buy gold and 2) impossible to bot gold into the economy, would you still have a problem with GDKP?

If your answer is “yes”, then you’ll need to explain why. If your answer is “no”, then all you’re doing is complaining about a symptom without addressing the real problem. Your mission is clear: come up with solution to the problem.

In my opinion, because deep 40 man progression essentially requires at least some people participating (the “leaders”) to make it their part-time job in life, it does not surprise me at all that a way to compensate them for real life $ has become the established, functional system by which 40 man progression raiding lives on today.

It’s not all that different from a league of legends player paying a trainer hourly to help them work on their game and progress, just the detail of how the monetary transaction is structured vary.

In other words, your purist ideals are admirable, but if playing the game the way you suggest were the only way to end-game raid, the game would have died quickly after launch because enough people wouldn’t continue playing Classic Era on Blizzard servers to justify the resources dedicated.

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You actually have no idea what you’re talking about. I put more gold into GDKP pots than I get because 80% or more of the gold I make is from selling items I make on the AH. I inflate the pots from gold that I earn by utilizing the AH that you say is not the primary driver for RMT. The real primary driver for RMT is players who are so lazy or so lacking in integrity that they cannot help but cheat.

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Feelings and opinions help determine whether or not you want to play the game. Both are valid in arguments. (imo)

I see we agree. :wink:

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Haha =)

It’s not that feelings and opinions are bad…but we should endeavor to couple them with arguments, facts, and analysis.

“Turn off GDKP because I think it’s ruining how I want to play the game” is a valid feeling to have. But to say such a thing without considering whether perhaps the game wouldn’t exist if people could ONLY play the way YOU like to play might be helpful!

Likewise, it’s not the GDKP that’s ruining how they want to play. It’s the bots. Which exist to farm gold because time in the game is worth real-life money to people. What an amazing game for that to be the case, and we should be happy it is the case!

It’s silly really…botting will always be a problem so long as the game is good enough for time spent in it to be worth $, so let’s say it’s a good problem to have and work on solving it directly, not indirectly, because the end of that road (de-incentivization of botting) only goes to one place (making the game not worth botting any more, ie making the game worse)

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In many cases I agree. On this I tend to base it on my feelings.
GDKP makes the game feel more like transaction and less like an RPG. Which means I won’t participate in them. If it becomes a situation where they are nearly the only choice, I quit playing.

It’s good to see people still have a sense of humor. :+1:t4:

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as someone who agrees, this is why the solution has been lower-player-count content. I think SoD offers us a unique chance to handle that situation and see if GDKP becomes less of an issue; instead of Naxx 40, will there be less of a demand for GDKP in SoD if it’s Naxx 10 or Naxx 20? Perhaps if SoD adds challenging end-game content for 5-15 players, I will play Era as something more than a single player RPG like I already do. It’s certainly easier to find 9 other people with the same mindset of “I would rather just do the content” than 39.

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They’re popular because they are far, far easier than the alternative and there is game currency to be made and stockpiled when you account for peoples impatience and lack of scruples.

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Easier is an interesting way to put it.

The gameplay skill involved doesn’t change (it’s the same raid), so why is it easier?

Goes back to the organization of 40 people who know what they’re doing at the same time for hours, on a weekly consistency.

That’s not “playing the game”, that’s organizing 40 peoples’ lives outside the game in a way that allows them to play the game.

And I’m all for THAT being easier, and it doesn’t have anything to do with “impatience or lack of scruples”.

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I don’t believe this conclusion is true.

DKP’s original purpose was to reward people for sticking with the guild long term. With open roll, someone who has been in the guild for one raid can win an item over someone who has been in the guild for one year. Furthermore, that person who was in the raid for one night could then take that item, quit, and join another guild which then takes that item away from the first guild and no longer contributes towards their progression. DKP was a reward for time spent, giving loot priority to members who have spent more time in the guild.

It’s actually not a bad loot system. Contrary to what you’ve stated, people actually do still use it. My first raiding guild when Classic first came out certainly did and it was completely fine. This doesn’t mean it’s flawless though… the two main issues folks have with it are:

  1. It’s a bit technical to implement and maintain. You typically need an external website and/or an addon and someone has to do the secretarial work of maintaining the database. It’s a fair bit of overhead.
  2. Long-term members who have all the items they need from previous tiers tend to build up extremely large DKP pools that new members coming in have no hope of ever achieving no matter how many bids they lose. The vanilla guild I joined back in the day had members with thousands of DKP and new members had less than 100, with a typical bid being in the 50-150 range because their policy was pay one more than highest bid.

So loot systems have evolved and there was a lot of iteration on DKP to try to make it more fair, but it always came with that maintenance overhead. This is typically why people gravitate towards loot council. It’s easier, but you do have to trust your guild’s leadership.

GDKP though is nothing like this. It doesn’t solve any long-term commitment issues and the raid is not based around long-term progression. It has one purpose and one purpose only, keep people in the raid for its duration by offering a payout at the end, not as each boss is killed. I was here when it first started gaining popularity and that was the stated premise… to avoid the “I got what I needed from the raid, cya!” situations.

Of course, it then morphed as people saw it as a way to make money. Instead of joining raids where everybody needed needed loot and was working together, it became a money making scheme. Now people who need nothing from the raid are there for the sole reason of making money and the group has split into the carriers and the carries, bringing with it a tooooon of excessive rationalization about who should get what for payouts and cuts.

Now it’s not a loot system at all. It’s not about motivating people to stick together and progress so everybody can experience the content, it’s about selling loot to other players and getting paid for your time. It’s a machine and it’s treated as such by those who organize it and particiapte in it as carriers.

The sad part is, if people weren’t so willing to pay their way through the game it wouldn’t be an issue. GDKP can’t survive without people willing to throw gold at the game, but sadly, those people exist. The result though is that 5+ years of GDKP and player-driven WoW monetization has people seeing the game through a lens of profit, which is now the expectation.

I mean, why go join a raid and just have fun when you can do it and make money? Why go join a community and personally invest in people when you can just pay for it?

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I won’t pretend that my experience is the norm, but from the people I’ve met I don’t think I am the only one who has had a much more positive experience with GDKPs than with their main raids.

I’ve always been a gold goblin, Runescape probably conditioned me to liking numbers go up, and because making gold is one of my favorites activities in-game I never bought a single coin as it would just ruin my fun. I managed to save over 1 million gold in Wrath thanks to prospecting titanium, cutting gems and transmuting on a bunch of alts. After that I bought Shadowmourne on my DK and then got almost every item I needed to be full tank BiS. Checking my Warrior’s statistics (my main JC), he has gained about 2 million gold in the AH himself alone. My guildmates and close friends will probably agree that I was by far the most active player in my guild, logging every day to make thousands of golds became my hobby and routine. Once I got every item I wanted plus Invincible, I ended up with like 600k gold still in my pocket (I never stopped the money printer!), which I just split with some close friends and bought about 1 year of sub time for each. I raided till the end of Wrath on almost every single lockout I could go to on my DK, just to put the gear to use, and it was so much fun.

GDKP was great, and met some of the most chill players in my entire classic journey in them.

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Some people see raiding like “playing basketball with friends”.

You need to show up at a specific time.

When people talk like you do, I wonder if they view other players as actual people or just NPCs to help them do what they want to get done in game?

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If blizz made a curated classic server with in game support and observation to ban gold buying and paid winning, it would be the most popular server.

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I don’t particularly disagree with your portrayal of DKP, but you’re just not understanding the situation deeply enough. “Reward people for sticking with the guild long term” isn’t a goal. “Keep a guild together that is capable of getting the best loot” is the goal.

DKP is a bad economy because there is no transitive property. My DKP becomes worth 0 if the guild breaks up, or if I move on to another guild, or if they kick me out. That makes the value very fragile.

From a macro perspective, this is why GDKP is much better at keeping a cohesive community of raiders active. DKP will never serve that function, which means it will never support the community numbers needed to keep Classic WoW alive.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t work well for the reasons you’re saying, just doesn’t help solve the problem we’re talking about.

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I think the issue here is that everybody has convinced themselves that they need this. It’s certainly easy to talk yourself into… saying “What if my guild gkicks me, then all that effort is wasted!” absolutely invokes feelings of anxiety over the fear of loss.

The reality though is this…

  1. Is that likely to happen? I mean, I’ve been playing this game for 20 years. I’ve been in maybe a little over a handful of retail guilds in all that time and only two actual Classic guilds since its release in 2019. This will be more for some and less for others, but generally a low number.
  2. If it does happen, so what? Yea, you lose all your DKP, so you join another guild, spend time with them, and just get loot through whatever loot system they have.

So really, this is a fear-based statement based around an expectation that you (not you, specifically, the royal you) are not only entitled to loot, but that you are entitled to the best loot. Additionally, in large part to a lot of the culture surrounding a solved game, thes players feel like they *need* this gear in order to be successful. Which is also not true… Classic’s design is fairly friendly to a large range of player power, especially when compared to its retail form where the previous tier’s loot is extremely weak compared to the current tier, and gear from two tiers back is completely obsolete.

So really, I think we have two key issues right now…

  • Players don’t feel like they should have to form long-term relationships with other players in a game that was specifically designed around forming long-term relationships with other players.
  • Players feel like they need the best things in the game, and that they should get them just because they are there.

GDKP doesn’t really address these problems, it just plays into them, enabling those viewpoints to exist and amplifying them. That doesn’t make it a good thing and your solutions really only take things further down that same road. Which, I might add, is certainly a solution!

A lot of what you’re advocating for can be round in retail. There’s no denying that there are problems surrounding Vanilla’s design. It’s just not for everybody and back then there really wasn’t any choice. So retail iterated and developed into what we see today… a much more accessible format that downplays long-term interactions in favour of more isolated, session based accessibility.

Should Era, which is a repeat of Vanilla, do those same things? Or can it be what it is and be a place where people who do want to enjoy that type of game can find it?

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I have thought about that quite a bit, and I’ve always wondered if letting people buy all the pieces from a raid with a badge/emblem system could achieve a functional in-game DKP system instead of relying on gold.

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Yes this is fair. Open rolls it the only way to do it!
Bear me out.

We’re here at the core of the matter. The word “MINE!”
People join a raid or a dungeon to get THEIR shoulders, THEIR staff, THEIR ring and so on.
They somehow feel entitled to this one item - the same mentality being behind the reserved Blah-blah-

To this I say: No, no item is mine until I ran that dungeon, and won the need roll over anobody else who can use this item and for whom it s also an improvement.
And for me this is part and parcel of the experience, as much of a kick as slaying the boss.

For me the solution to DKP/GDKP runs is easy. Don’t do it, stop being entitled. It is only for fun, It is only pixels.