the majority of private servers dont have GDKP’s because gold is easily bought via the website, or Gear thats easily bought via the websites or the bots that auto generate gold.
My belief’s stem from actually playing the game during Sod with zero GDKP’s, and playing classic with GDKP’s and NO gdkp’s.
My issue is that Without GDKP’s there is no reason to go back to previous raids as we see MC being practically dead or hard to fill from scratch in era on a friday-sunday night.
Then again in SOD when AQ/Naxx was out and absolutely no one, ran content that wasnt current, as to where filling for an MS>OS/2sr was relatively Easy and Faster when GDKP’s were around regardless if content was current or not.
In TBC i ran and put together GDKP’s AND 2sr Runs about 2-5 times a week, and the SR runs filled within 30mins and clears just fine ( if current content) if its not current content your SR run turns into a prog raid.
i dont have to lie, I’ve lived the experiences of all 4 scenarios.