I’m going to start by saying this outright and upfront:
TRIGGER WARNING - IF YOU BUY GOLD AND/OR PREDOMINANTLY SPAM GDKPS ON ALL YOUR ALTS THIS POST MIGHT MAKE YOU UPSET.
Now that the niceties are done, let’s talk about the best way forward into Cataclysm Classic for the development team & community. We are all aware of the prevalence of GDKP runs in Classic World of Warcraft. Never through the past four year lifespan of this iteration of the game has it been so omnipresent in the culture.
The only way forward for the health and integrity of the classic franchise, is to do what they refused to do at the outset of The Burning Crusade. Place a restrictive hard cap on the gold which can be transferred to Cataclysm on launch. I know what you’re thinking, they can’t do that, right?
WRONG.
They can and should do this, and implement this restriction in a way which cannot be circumvented easily. Make the hard-cap for gold tied to one’s Battle.net account/email, and require verification. Impose a limit of 10k gold, to ensure that someone looking to circumvent this by opening several accounts to increase their individual cap, is severely inconvenienced and must come out of pocket considerably to “get ahead”.
This is just an idea of mine to attempt to level the playing field at base minimum for the launch of the expansion.
We all know that botting will be forthcoming, and GDKPs will continue but at least we can have a pseudo fresh slate to come into the expansion with.
Doing nothing about the millions of gold in circulation would be a huge L for the classic dev team that so urgently wants buy-in from the classic wow community on this next expansion in the classic saga.
In a fully progressed server, you’re probably right.
During the launch on a new expansion, there will be a dichotomy created of the haves and have nots. Auction house prices will be prohibitive for any new or returning players, which will matter at the start.
Think of every phase launch in wrath to date, prices spike for all the new valuable materials for a period of time, the launch of an expansion is like that on crack.
The bots will be running wild on launch, they will make it so everything is dirt cheap.
For instance even right now a new player can do Heroic FOS and do 2 daily quests with an 8 minute dungeon and make 160g.
They can do that every single day on any number of toons.
Potion of speeds are like 9g/ea, raiding has never been cheaper.
GDKPs literally do nothing to an economy.
Now if blizzard say removed every single bot in the game currently than and only than would the massive amount of gold on the server pose an issue.
Since now the supply wont keep up with the demand of the server because bots are no longer farming the massive amounts of gold players have and since now players need to farm mats themselves then you would see a massive price spike in what things cost.
GDKPs do impact economies, just like bots do. They become the single most efficient way to “farm gold”, and the price of literally any other farm could never keep pace.
It’s actually analog to Season of Discovery’s issue with PVP. The single path of least resistance and highest most efficient way of farming honor is premading, so that becomes the most prevalent format for that sub-sect of the game.
Regardless I’m not here to discuss the merits of GDKP as a loot format, I’m here to offer a way forward or at least an idea for a more equitable start to Cataclysm Classic for all.
Just because you have a feeling that this would likely be in vain by the end of phase 1, doesn’t mean Blizzard shouldn’t make an effort to do something about this issue.
We all know the magic of the beginning of a new expansion and it would be a shame if they didn’t make an attempt to preserve the average player’s experience.
And the reason why it didn’t happen in TBC is most likely because there are people who’ve reached gold cap without buying gold or by attending GDKP’s. To remove the gold that they’ve spent a long time accumilating will only harm the players that don’t GDKP or RMT while doing pretty much nothing to the people that RMT and attend GDKP’s.
A better way to deal with gold is have more gold sinks, that’s all they need to do.
An inflated economy is amazing for casual players, though. i don’t care if it’s all bought/botted gold.
I love gdkping because I can pve on weeks that I feel like, and I’m not trolling 24 other people if I miss a day or a whole phase.
All this being said, of course GDKP is the prime driver of botting and gold-selling. But it’s honestly a plus. It only hurts “farmer” players who like to grind gold on their own, which I do empathize with.
Your average everyday player will get crazy gold just from AHing random stuff like Swiftthistle, and be able to afford his mount, spells etc very easily. This is a good thing
Deleting gold would help combat inflation but it wouldn’t do a thing to GDKP. People will always make more or buy more to bring into it. You type so much text for a change that ultimately wouldn’t help your cause.
Here’s something that would help your cause. If you don’t want to do GDKP, then simply don’t go to those raids. If no one went to them, then there would be no GDKP raids. The guy recruiting it would sit there alone posting for a raid that would never fill. But the reality is, most people want GDKP, even if you don’t. (Lets protect GDKP - #74 by Drain-windseeker)
in short words
“personal loot” & make items Un-tradeable to any raid member.
that will fix the whole gdkp issue, also it will fix the corrupt loot council and the ninja.
I am keeping all of my gold that I have worked hard for. I’m not interested in your gold cap or your ideas because you are unable to participate in GDKPs (of which I don’t but have the gold to do so if I wished) or your inability to make gold in game.
The fact that I have a lot more than 10k of legit gold that I’ve done a ton of dailies/crafting/auction house work (and 0 GDKPs) for is what your post triggers.
You dont understand how an economy works and it shows, at that same time, it is the peak time for people without gold to make a ton of gold, off of those exact same things…
They heavily incentivice and facilitate gold buying, tons of top end GDKP´s are run with the gold buying done through the raid itself, which makes it way harder for blizzard to track and do something about.
Not calling this specific claim into question, however there were several threads in the CS forums of people who participated in GDKP, had not bought gold prior, and caught bans for receiving purchased gold via a GDKP payout. They are watching and catching this, just in waves not as a case by case.
There’s so many delusional people that think this will make anything to combat bots or even gdkps.
If you impose gold cap, people will just start using other currencies to store gold. Just take wotlk as an example, just switch to storing primordial saronites or something expensive that stacks to 100 or 200. The only way to fix this problem is ban gold buyers/sellers and actually impose ToS instead of doing some economic gymnastics.
Overall I think it’s a terrible idea. The inflation in Cataclysm alone will be a massive shift in the value of gold, anything under 100k or so is trivial.