I have read about it repeatedly on the forums but never saw it explained.
It’s where people “buy” their way into a raid, and the gold is distributed among the people doing the carry.
In and of itself, not against the rules. Since gold for in-game services is allowed. The problem is, gold sellers have started using GDKP to launder stolen gold, resulting in people receiving a lot of stolen gold. It’s become a huge issue, the real life equivalent is a bunch of people buying TV’s from a van in the alley and then claiming “well I didn’t know it was stolen.”
Blizzard is experimenting with banning GDKP entirely (right now it’s just unsupported). Depending on how that goes in SOD, I would expect a GDKP ban on current servers soon™.
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You basically bid gold for loot drops from raids, and then the collected gold is split between the raiders.
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Google dragon kill points. It awards participants with gear. Gdkp replaces gold instead of participation for gear in raids.
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The original form of this activity is the “Dragon Kill Points” system , or DKP. The raid organizer kept a record of raid participation and awarded points to raiders. Raiders accumulated points and as items in the raid became available to be looted, raiders bid some amount of their accumulated DKP for the item.
The more your participation, the more you could bid. The fewer blamable mistakes you made, the more you could bid (because the DKP system sometimes included DKP penalties for screwing up). The more you bid and won items, the less you could bid on later items (because your balance was lower).
GDKP replaced kill points with gold that the raiders brought into the raid, essentially anteing up to join the raid and bidding gold to get loot. The leftover pot is divided among the non-loot-winners (after the raid organizer pockets a sizeable cut, which is why they organize the raid).
The reason this can be a problem is because sometimes the gold a player puts in the pot is from illicit sources, such as 3rd party gold sellers, and everyone who receives gold from an illegal-gold-tainted GDKP pot is likely to receive a ban for improper market exploitation (the catch-all for economic “crimes” in WoW).
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This is a very simple and straightforward explanation. The people in the raid bid gold for items like an auction, and everyone gets paid to participate/carry others.
I will also link Blizzard’s definition of GDKP because it is relevant to the SoD changes coming up soon. No matter what players say, Blizzard has defined it as any gold changing hands during the raid.
This thread covers all of it. GDKP in Season of Discovery
What is GDKP and why is it being restricted in Season of Discovery?
GDKP is a loot system some players use that essentially allows all loot to be purchased in a dungeon or raid using gold rather than being rolled for or awarded using another loot system. How this typically works is that an item drops and is then put up for gold bid among the members of the group. Players will submit their bids in gold, and the highest bidder wins. After the item is won, gold is traded to the loot master, and then that gold is usually divided among all the raid members
What exactly constitutes a “gold bid” or GDKP raid?
- We’re defining GDKP as any raid or dungeon run where items are awarded in exchange for gold. Please note that we have multiple detection methods for GDKP that are effective both inside and outside of dungeon or raid instances.
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This definition attacks the heart of Blizzard’s issue: GDKP activities as a way of distributing illicit gold, “money laundering” after a fashion. It simplifies the forensics by simply declaring that any gold transaction in a raid is per se as illegal as if they could trace illicit gold into the activity. They’re cutting off any attempts to rule-lawyer this situation.
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