For those guilds that ran DKP guilds either back in the day 2004 Vanilla, or 2019 Classic, how did you manage DKP? What determined the value of items, how was DKP earned, and what were some issues you ran into?
The way I remember running it back in the day was just guildies on alts bidding on stuff never more then 50g, 100g… couple of 100g for top tier stuff and in most cases there would be a main in the run that miss the raid and the item went to them. The gold made was for the guild to buy consumables for the raiders.
Earning DKP went something like this.
+10 per hour in the raid
+25 per boss killed
You could also earn DKP for helping guild members doing something for the raid team like getting them attuned, making flasks, providing consumes etc.
If it was a “progression night” meaning the odds of repeat wiping are high, DKP usually had a bonus to encourage participation.
Spending DKP went something like
Guild decides up front what the loot prio is for each class for each item that drops in the raid zone. Each item that drops is handled by an officer to take private bids on, and the high bidder wins the item.
Perdition’s Blade drops, and the Rogues who want it /whisper their bid to the officer assigned to take bids for that item. Highest bid wins.
If the priority class for the item does not want or need it, then anyone who wants to bid may do so.
It was common for people who knew what they were doing to hoard DKP and only spend it on true upgrades and not grab just any old piece that might be cool.
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website tracked it. officers took a screenshot of raid and manually entered it.
Did anyone use a spreadsheet with each item having a set price?
For just bidding, would it be the one whisper bid, or would it be a public bid keeping going higher and higher?
Any issues with the system you remember having?
(Also, i am not talking about GDKP, only normal DKP).
One guild I played with used a spreadsheet with set values on each item. They also included a weekly decay element to members’ DKP in an effort to promote actively buying upgrades as they drop as opposed to hoarding it all for months.
Edit - did a little more digging and the system I was thinking of is called EP/GP. Here’s an old thread going overs its pros & cons:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/best-loot-system-epgp/
With this loot system things like spreadsheets or similar are important in my opinion so your raiders can plan their gear upgrade path and what items they are going for. That may even lead to discussion between your raiders of a certain class on who is going for what first and that’s totally fine imo.
My guild did not have set prices on items, but we did have a minimum bid per item type. I don’t recall the numbers but it was by category like tier set pieces, off set pieces, weapons and so on.
Our bids were whispers. The main reason to do public bids would be to have a bidding war and that wasn’t really what we cared about. Typically a person placed one bid per item that they wanted to bid on, but if they sent more than one whisper before bidding closed that’s fine. When we ran DKP bids were open for about 2 minutes, high bid when it closes is the winner.
As Despitebeing said you do need some kind of decay for the reasons he stated.
The main issues with DKP tend to be around loot priorities, and people who don’t have good attendance generally won’t like the decay or that others have more buying power than they do. DKP guilds also tend to put people on “trial period” status where they are earning but cannot spend on upgrades for a period of time. Loot priorities should be much less of a problem than they were in 2005 because players just understand gearing better. I also think it is hard to do DKP unless you have at least 40 players and can make a viable raid from your guild each time, it does not work to bring PUGs to a DKP run and will cause headaches.
DKP systems are obsolete. managing the points is a thankless chore nobody wants to be bothered with. DKP is mostly replaced by loot council, which is basically the same as DKP but without all the paperwork 
The DKP guild I was in during Classic Era rewarded equal DKP to bench too, but the stipulation was to be online, and waiting outside of the instance, logged off and in discord. You could be playing an alt; just had to be ready to hop in if needed.
New members got DKP and bidding rights from day 1. I think we just bid on raid chat, and I don’t recall if there were any restrictions on who could bid on what.
Yeah that makes sense. We also awarded DKP to folks who showed up but were on standby for whatever reason.
There is a fair amount of customization you can do with DKP. Awarding and spending on day one as you said would be one thing and not bad at all in my opinion.
DKP systems are obsolete. managing the points is a thankless chore nobody wants to be bothered with. DKP is mostly replaced by loot council, which is basically the same as DKP but without all the paperwork
I found Loot Council to be a hassle. Tank gearing was the only thing that was straight forward. I think it comes down to something psychological for some people where their feelings can be hurt if they aren’t picked. The reason Legolazzz got the thing and they didn’t could be straight forward and obvious but it plants a seed.
Thinking back to 2005 this is what my Vanilla guild did. The person who got the item was the first one to say they wanted it from my memory, but the price was always set. I remember going from the start of Mc where we wiped on trash all the way up to Naxx 40 and ending it out with a huge amount of unused DKP. There was no decay. Really new people catching up didn’t happen but we had a lot of original players that went all the way through. I don’t remember if people on the bench got DKP. I don’t think that was the best loot system but that’s what we used.
My classic guild used this DKP/SK hybrid thing where you’d use your DKP if you wanted the item (bidding) and then if no one did it went to the suicide king list. DKP came from boss kills and there were sometimes bonuses. Not much really got wasted like can happen in standard DKP. It was interesting but things didn’t always get prioed right (even though we did have some restrictions) and also one guy used all his DKP to get this really good warrior weapon from Naxx (I forget what) and then quit WoW forever. That made some people salty. By tbcc we switched to loot council with thatsmybis as a tool for what people wanted.
Still use dkp.
1 point earned per raid night. Points cap at 20. Its silent bid, you so just whisper the lootmaster your bid and the winner is announced after. You can bid 0, then if it ties it just defaults to rolling.
Its probably not the most efficient system for progression, but for the most part has been completely drama free.
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My guild handles it this way:
50 per raid night, 25 bonus for being there both nights
800 point hard cap (points earned that night float, so effectively they are at 850 for the night before going back to 800 if unspent)
Items are bid off silent auction style (no one can see the bids until it’s over), in a single round. Bid increments of 25 (minimum bid is 25, 0 is only allowed if a player has zero DKP).
Highest bid wins it for that price. If there is a tie, roll off.
Off-spec/PvP bids are capped at 25, there is no main spec priority for 25 bids.
(If the 2nd highest bid is more than 100 under the highest, the top bidder gets it for the 2nd highest bid +100)
The low cap keeps people from hoarding too much, silent bids keeps people from running up the bids on others, and the single round keeps things moving. Low floor on prices let’s people not feel too bad about taking smaller upgrades, and the overbid protection encourages more spending so the pole positions change.
It has worked well for us.
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Pretty much this when I was a raid lead/officer back in the day. A weapon might be 100 DKP and others may be higher or lower depending on difficulty or rarity.
We did allow people to go negative if no one else wanted it, but they could only go so far negative until they had to accrue DKP to buy again. But if someone had positive points to spend on it, then they would get the priority since they had more. If two people had the same amount of points and both wanted the same thing, I’d see which one got an item last and give it to the one who hadn’t received anything.
Keeps people happy and fair.