So, this might date me like crazy, but DKP has always stood for “Dragon Kill Points”. I didn’t raid back when it was a thing, so I might be wrong, but my understanding of DKP was that it was a loot system based around good raider points (show up on time, help with strats, be shot-caller, pass on loot) you got to turn in for a priority lot on loot.
So, what’s this new “GDKP” system and what’s got the community so divided over it? Because all I can see it as is “Group Dragon Kill Points” in my head, and that doesn’t sound right.
You only get them for killing Gold Dragons. Kidding.
Gist is: loot goes to auction in the group for gold and at the end of the raid all the gold spent by players on loot is evenly distributed. Theoretically means everyone is a winner, since even if you miss out on items you’ll get a portion of the gold others spent ‘winning’ theirs.
Some people enjoy it because it’s a sensible and fair system for PUGs, and it creates incentives to run old content. Some people despise it because they allege it incentivises RMT.
The name doesn’t really make any sense because there are no points involved anymore.
“Dragon” is just a gamer word for loot piñata, points is the final score you get when you finish a dungeon, based on how many times you jumped inside the dungeon.
The old DKP system rewarded participation, which in itself made it an elitist system because the people with the highest DKP were the “core group” that always went with the same people every week, and anyone outside of the “core group” wanting in on that action could be let in if they were lucky, but almost always lose out on the loot rolls because one of the “core guys” has higher DKP than you (obviously).
Guild/raid leads had a way of calculating it, I’m GUESSING it was an addon, or they dealt with Excel spreadsheets or some other BS.
DKP was the opposite, it was a (theoretically) meritorious system. Points were awarded to individuals for participating in activities that benefited the guild (IE, clearing raids) and those points were spent for items that benefit the individual player. Everybody got the same number of points for doing the same tasks.
Loot Council was the, by definition, elitist system. A small handful of self-appointed players unilaterally determine who gets what gear, leading to the infamous favouritism of GMs and Officers giving prestigious loot to undeserving players.
Its an even bigger reason for people to buy gold and basically make the game pay2win considering all they have to do to get any piece of gear in the game is swipe a credit card.
most people don’t buy gold, but with the dungeon changes that prevent gold farming I do expect gold buying to increase again, blizzard is dead set on forcing people to buy gold
To be honest Gold Dragon Kill Points doesn’t make a great deal of sense.
DKP was originally a system whereby you earned points killing dragons (Nagafen and Vox in EverQuest originally) and spent those point taking loot. It then expanded to earning points for all boss kills not just dragons.
GDKP just allocates loot to the person prepared to pay the most gold.
It would be more accurately called Gold Auction Loot, but GDKP seems to have stuck. By this point everyone knows what it means even if the acronym doesn’t really make sense.
I put BIIIIG quote marks around “theoretically”. Again, I was always of the impression (based on my somewhat limited experience - I did MC and a bit of BWL back in vanilla, and ZG and AQ20 on the side) that the DKP system was basically meant to reward the people who “showed up”, and if it was always the same 20-40 people who “showed up” every week because they’re the main team (or are the guild leader’s brother’s cousin’s best friend’s former roommate or some arbitrary BS), it made it difficult for anyone else to progress in it.
A meritorious system sounds like a good idea in theory, as you point out, but one that got abused the hell out of quite a lot. Again, this is my experience with it, YMMV and what not.
