I wanted to point to a brief survey on GDKP and Icecrown Citadel that I posted to my server's forum. Something similar may be helpful to fellow GDKP-run organizers as you prepare for the 3.3 patch.
EDIT: And here's the signup thread for the first such raid. Let the wipes commence!
I've been running a GDKP run for the last 3 weeks on my server and I have maintained a thread in the realm forum regarding it. Today I was approached by a level 1 that told me they were working for a company that wants to build a kind of GDKP social networking site. They offered to give me 3000 gold in exchange for the roster of who attended.
A couple of red flags went up, the person wouldn't reveal what the website was to me, they spoke in semi-broken english, and referred to users of the site as 'workers' (the GDKP raid leader) and 'customers' (those who attend). The whole thing seemed kind of sinister.
I figure at best, they are going to spam people, at worst they are going to target people who they know have money on their accounts. I am curious, has anyone else been approached? If so, do you have more information about what this organization is?
I figure at best, they are going to spam people, at worst they are going to target people who they know have money on their accounts.
If they can do anything to someone's account, they can check there's money in it without talking to you.
What I think is going on here is a gold seller or a scammer has discovered GDKP and seen a pretty good way to make several hundred Euro/dollars in an hour - take a hacked raiding toon and before flogging all the gear, lead a raid through TOC, take the money and run. If what the scum who randomly whisper you say about their stocks is true, one stolen pot could double or triple the amount of gold they hold on a given realm.
A couple of red flags went up, the person wouldn't reveal what the website was to me, they spoke in semi-broken english, and referred to users of the site as 'workers' (the GDKP raid leader) and 'customers' (those who attend). The whole thing seemed kind of sinister.
I figure at best, they are going to spam people, at worst they are going to target people who they know have money on their accounts.
Going from player name to account name hopefully isn't feasible for a source outside Blizzard. Knowing who has cash shouldn't make them easier to target for hacks.
To me it sounds more like an extension of selling gold. Set up the business (against Terms of Service, of course) for people to sign up for raids. Rather than GDKP people bid actual real world currency. Highest bid wins item. Rather than selling gold they'd sell raids and raid loot.
I've heard there's a precedent for such, this is an anecdote I was told towards the end of Vanillar and cannot be sure is accurate - caveat emptor. Apparently in Vanilla some group of Chinese Farmers began raiding and were good at it (it was part of their job, so they took it seriously). So good that they began to clear Naxx and AQ at level 60 shortly after each was released. Once they could do this they opened a few slots in the raid and sold them. 30-odd of them would carry 2 or 3 people through Naxx and AQ for a set fee, any loot those people wanted was additional cost.
I think you did well by stonewalling the questioner. It's not something to be encouraged.
Rock: "We're sub-standard DPS. Nerf Paper, Scissors are fine."
Paper: "OMG, WTF, Scissors!"
Scissors: "Rock is OP and Paper are QQers. We need PvP buffs."
Now's a great time for people to take advantage of one of GDKP's strengths: Ability to successfully push raids through content that's not ordinarily easily done by PUG's. Namely Icecrown 25.
The first GDKP Icecrown 25 pug on Blackrock the other day only killed Marrowgar, but had a pot of 50k+ by that stage alone (including a lucky trash epic drop). There is a big market for people dying to get in the Icecrown instance. Item ilvl upgrades are very attractive (Most of your raid members won't be wearing 258 heroic TotGC gear. It would be a whopping jump from ilvl 245 to 264 for many) - and people will be prepared to pay for this.
Doing a fresh instance GDKP such as Icecrown presents a few new challenges and concerns:
- Gear standards need to be higher overall
- More important to make sure you have the best possible geared tanks
- You probably won't be able to kill all available bosses on your first raid
- A large component of the raid will have zero experience with the instance
- The Raid Leader will need to have a much more formiddable understanding the boss encounters, a good understanding of every player role (dps / tank / healer), and the ability to fluently communicate all of this to the raid more thoroughly than what's required for TOC.
A few notes for how best to manage this:
- Good candidates for invites to your initial IC raid will be Alts of raiders from raid guilds. These players should have done the instance already on their main and know what to do/expect. Make sure in any forum/signup requests you get people to specify whether they have done the instance on another character (and you will need to show the achievement ingame as proof)
- Raid leaders who already have a big regular roster to draw from (from their ToC 25 runs) should have it easier to find quality geared players, and have a good idea of who the good players are which would be suitable for a new instance.
- Although some strats/videos are available, it's still much easier to lead the raid after having done a successful clear yourself. Marrowgar should fall over easily, but Deathwhisper needs a confident raid leader - who prior understands an encounter which might seem confusing at first, with all the different types of adds - to setup the raid. Thus, doing early IC's is probably a better idea for Raid Leaders who have already personally done the instance.
- To handle gear standards: You will want to throw away the idea of intentionally bringing undergeared buyers for now. Nearly everyone will be interested in the ilvl 264 drops, and everyone can now be considered 'undergeared by Icecrown standards'. A raid full of predominantly ilvl 245 geared players will suffice, and not harm the pot much - unlike TOC - providing you ensured players have good wealth to make auctions competitive.
Given that it would be unrealistic to aim to kill Deathbringer initially on your first night, you'll want to set a finish time for your raid. The pot is split at that time, regardless of what bosses are alive or dead.
It might seem implausible, at first, that people will want to join an Icecrown raid which might be capable of killing just a few bosses. However given that theres no other avenue (currently) for the majority of people to get in the 25 man instance, together with the excellent ilvl drops ensuring a good pot, and people eager for badges or even to satisfy their curiousity of seeing Icecrown - there should be a healthy pool of players eager to go to an organised GDKP Icecrown 25 raid right now.
Many raid guilds will also be looking to organise a second in-guild Icecrown 25 weekly, with alts. GDKP is a good way to flesh out those raids. Although it's possible to easily find people who will happily fill a spot and come, this method of pugging still has stronger hooks to ensure people will stay to the end-time and perform accordingly until then. The first Raid Leaders (and raid members) who manage to put together groups that can regularly kill up to Deathbringer stand to reap enormous rewards. Word will get out for these successfull PUG's fast, especially when nobody else can do them, and the desirable/wealthy players will be beating at your door eager to come, and you simply cherry pick the ones you feel will benefit the raid the most (both in terms of ability to kill bosses, and generate gold for the pot).
Primordial Saronite is worth a mention. All major raid guilds will be looking to craft Shadowmourne, and many IC 25 raids will have a backbone of players from a single guild. Whether to reserve or auction the Saronite will be an issue to consider. While you could say "LFM GKP IC 25, Primordial Saronite reserved", it might be a better idea not to initially, at least until you can successfull kill 3-4 bosses. Remember most groups probably won't clear all 4 bosses up to Deathbringer right away, and you might want the extra G from Saronite to flesh out your pot. You want to give people every possible incentive to come. Another option is to arrange for your Gbank to purchase any saronite for a healthy baseline figure, if demand is low. (Eg, X guild will purchase all Primordial Saronite for 5 k each, but players are free to bid higher if they wish). If your group can kill up to Deathbringer, then reserving Saronite is a pill much easier to swallow, compared to if you can barely kill the first one or two bosses only.
On various forums i've seen people suggest that "GDKP will die when Icecrown is released". However the opposite is true, it should thrive, especially for realms that now have strong GDKP communities set up. This doesn't necessarily mean there will be more IC GDKP runs compared to TOC (there will be less), but that these runs will be doing things not possible yet for many average pug's, upping their exclusivity.
I'd expect that it won't be too long before servers such as Blackrock, Llane and Mal'ganis make (successful 4/4) IC-25 GDKP's commonplace. Other servers might take a little longer.
I've been running a GDKP run for the last 3 weeks on my server and I have maintained a thread in the realm forum regarding it. Today I was approached by a level 1 that told me they were working for a company that wants to build a kind of GDKP social networking site. They offered to give me 3000 gold in exchange for the roster of who attended.
A couple of red flags went up, the person wouldn't reveal what the website was to me, they spoke in semi-broken english, and referred to users of the site as 'workers' (the GDKP raid leader) and 'customers' (those who attend). The whole thing seemed kind of sinister.
I figure at best, they are going to spam people, at worst they are going to target people who they know have money on their accounts. I am curious, has anyone else been approached? If so, do you have more information about what this organization is?
I'd say the most obvious reason to ask the roster would be selling gold via whisperspam. Target marketing
Did our first run on EU-Kazzak today. Made it to Saurfang but couldn't get him down with a time limit of 3.5 hours on the raid. A few 5% wipes, and i would strongly recommend to any other GDKP raid that you make sure your healers know that fight pretty well before you devote too much time to it.
Very successful, and the pot ended up at around 30k, with items going very cheaply (as people were picked for ability, rather than how deep their pockets were). Lots of very positive feedback, and people looking forward to the next one.
As advice for anyone running it on their server, make sure you have an experienced raid leader, and a group that will listen to you. VT as always is a big plus, but the main thing i felt helped the run go smoothly was setting expectations right off the bat.
As soon as we zoned in, I started with 'right guys, i'll be blunt, we are going to wipe at least 4 times tonight - because there's no way we're getting all these bosses down first pull. If you're not up for a potential wipefest, now's the time to leave.'
It really helped, as no one was under the impression it was going to be like ToC, and no one could moan about wiping without sounding silly.
Our raid comp was
3 Tanks
6 Healers (3 shaman, 3 priest - dont ask!)
about 50/50 split of ranged/melee DPS
Apologies for this not being a particularly helpful post, but I wanted to share my experience, incase anyone was having doubts as to how achievable it was.
I'd expect that it won't be too long before servers such as Blackrock, Llane and Mal'ganis make (successful 4/4) IC-25 GDKP's commonplace.
I'm glad to report that Llane is three quarters of the way there! Like Tel's group we ran out of time, sadly with only one attempt on Saurfang. Three bosses and one trash drop resulted in a pot of 116,100g or 4,640g per person, nonetheless.
The majority of the raid had prior Icecrown experience of some kind but many did not, so I am very proud of everyone's efforts.
PS - The gunship-fails-to-dock bug hit us hard as I as the raid leader/master looter was killed on the opposite faction's ship at the very end of the fight. I manually entered the loot into GoldRaidManager, sold the items, then after the raid filed a ticket providing the names of those who won. (Hate to think of what would've happened if by chance no one had remained alive on our faction's ship.)
Pots approaching 120 000 / 5000 g splits after just the first wing are huge! That is very reminiscent of how TOC was originally when released. However, the difference here is we are getting the same numbers from only 4 Icecrown bosses.
The next wing of Icecrown will prove to be extremely lucrative to a GDKP run. Generally weapons and trinkets are the big ticket items. The next three bosses alone drop at least 2 trinkets and 5 weapons. This awesome caster trinket will send bids through the stratosphere: [Dislodged Foreign Object]
Managing a long, new raid like this will need careful thought and consideration. Even a relatively smooth PUG/GDKP will start to see fatigue/loss-of-concentration cracks after Deathbringer (lets say 2.5 hours). Raids could then do several things, each with pro's and con's
- Simply keep clearing without a break, and no option for people to leave with a share of the pot early
- Call the raid and do it another night (However: you might have trouble pulling together your regular, best geared/reliable regulars for a subsequent night on the newer bosses)
- Divide bosses 1-7 into 2 GDKP raids, with the Pot being split twice: Once after Deathbringer and once after Putricide. People can then opt to leave midway, or stay - while the raid takes a break and re-fills to prepare for the second wing.
Any method could work depending on your raid group and preferences. Although it might seem like 2 and 3 are the best options with no downside, you do give people an interesting dilemma. Do they come midway for an semi-cleared IC25, which is only killing bosses 4-7, has 8 less badges of frost available for them - or should they simply go to another fresh run?
The counter point to that sentiment is, it's unlikely that many GDKP raids will successfully kill all 7 bosses in one night for a while. So if casters really want their Dislodged Foreign Object, holding out for another run that has no guarantee to even get up to the boss they want most (when they have a run in front of them ready to attempt him) might not be a good idea. Many people would also like to see the second wing, get the achievement etc - regardless of whether they miss a few badges by coming in late.
Raid Leaders who want to organise full Icecrown clears will need to seriously plan in advance how to best approach it. Start talking to your regular trusted supporters and find out whether they have multiple nights they'd be available, if the run was to be split over 2 nights. Given that 7 IC bosses will take quite a while, you'll also need to ascertain how many people can start earlier/stay later as well. TOC is ~1.5 hours, IC 4 bosses might be ~2.5 hours - are you in a position to push it up to ~5 hours? That's a long raid for any PUG, especially for raids on a Social night when people often like to relax (Fri->Sun, when GDKP's are often run). It wouldn't be the same as a 'quick, fun TOC which makes me a few thousand gold easily', but rather something people will need to commit to a little more.
The upside is, of course, that the pot split for a successfull 7 boss IC clear will be enormous. People will be prepared to put up with the aforementioned downsides for their share of that. I wouldn't expect many GDKP's (for a while) to do this - it'll be only a relatively exclusive small subset who do (and reap the rewards). Primarily: Runs that have a very strong community backing them on their respective realm, and a strong raid leader to manage them.
Forget Llane, Blackrock, or Kazzak; the honor of being the first known realm to clear Icecrown 25 via GDKP belongs to Kilrogg. And yes, both raids occurred during the first week. I happened upon a blog post that mentioned the clears then found a forum post, maddeningly without details. The blog post does imply, though, a total pot between the two clears of ~300,000g! While an astounding figure, it's certainly in line with my group's 116.1K from three bosses. (One of the clears also included a Crusader 25 run--the forum thread discusses participants having to stay for both in order to receive the pot for that day--but surely the bulk of the cash didn't come from it.)
I know I am not alone in wanting to hear more from Graiford, the organizer!
Don't get too excited. A couple GDKP runs finished the unlocked portion of ICC25 on Mal'Ganis last week.
Yeah but MG has a rather large well-seasoned raider population. So all the "retirees", like myself (I'm on AD not MG), would gladly join these raids. So take the server and how many advanced raiding guilds it has, and take into consideration how many people "retired" on those servers but still play and are still very good players, just don't want to put in the time to be hardcore anymore. That's precisely the type of player a GDKP run wants.
EDIT: speaking of which, I recently came back to the game, anyone know of a GDKP runner on Argent Dawn?
Has anyone ever used GDKP as a guild loot system, and if so, how well did it work?
Although the guild fat cats might have an initial loot advantage, it seems like the system would quickly reallocate wealth so that even the poorest guild members could win new loot. Additionally, the beauty of GDKP is that you never lose. You just get cash instead of an item.
This might also be a convenient way for the guild to raise money. A guild could simply impose a small tax on the pot. Although this would be understandably frowned upon in a pug, players might be more willing to see a cut go to the guild instead of an individual. Especially if the guild allows patterns and orbs to be auctioned through the GDKP system instead of just stuffing them in the guild bank.
Has anyone ever used GDKP as a guild loot system, and if so, how well did it work?
Although the guild fat cats might have an initial loot advantage, it seems like the system would quickly reallocate wealth so that even the poorest guild members could win new loot. Additionally, the beauty of GDKP is that you never lose. You just get cash instead of an item.
This might also be a convenient way for the guild to raise money. A guild could simply impose a small tax on the pot. Although this would be understandably frowned upon in a pug, players might be more willing to see a cut go to the guild instead of an individual. Especially if the guild allows patterns and orbs to be auctioned through the GDKP system instead of just stuffing them in the guild bank.
This wouldn't work. The biggest reason why is you have the guys who have "just enough" time to dedicate to the guild to be there for raiding and to get the consumables together and everything else required to raid. And then you have the guys who play 24/7. The guys who play 24/7 will have the gold needed to buy all the best in slot items every time. So they would be the first to have a full suit of perfect gear while everyone else is stuck in "last dungeon" gear, until the 24/7 guy is fully equipped and no longer bidding.
We had a moderately successful GDKP run on Emerald Dream last week and I expect a good bit better this week and down Lady Deathwhisper.
I'm planning to split the raid across 2 days once the next wing opens which is convenient because I've been running two ToC 25 gdkp runs on separate nights and now I can just use 2nd night for ICC continued. But I do have a question in regards to this. I think the first 4 bosses are going to start dying MUCH faster than 2.5 hours. There's ~30 minutes of trash before Marrowgar (more if you don't disarm the Spirit Traps w/ a rogue), but after that you only have *seven* trash pulls total. I can easily see experienced raids in January clearing the first four bosses in 1.5 hours.
So my question is... Do you keep going and down possibly 1-2 more bosses and leave only a couple for the next night? or do you stop so that you have 4 left for next day?
In my opinion, you keep pressing on and down as many as you can in a set amount of time. Worst case scenario, you end up with just 1 boss left the next day and not enough saved folks returning and disinterest in unsaved folks for going to instance w/ just 1 boss left up. However, even in that worst case, you still downed 6 bosses.
This wouldn't work. The biggest reason why is you have the guys who have "just enough" time to dedicate to the guild to be there for raiding and to get the consumables together and everything else required to raid. And then you have the guys who play 24/7. The guys who play 24/7 will have the gold needed to buy all the best in slot items every time. So they would be the first to have a full suit of perfect gear while everyone else is stuck in "last dungeon" gear, until the 24/7 guy is fully equipped and no longer bidding.
This could happen. The question is essentially how quickly the resdistributive mechanism of GDKP could overcome any initial wealth advantage that a character might have in a relatively closed GDKP system. The answer to this question mostly depends on the initial wealth disparity between guild members and the weekly income of characters.
If, for instance, one character has 100,000 gold, and the other 24 have 100 gold, and no character were earning income, then it would taken many iterations for the wealth to equalize because the wealthy character need only bid 101 gold to win any given item. If the 24 members have 5,000 gold instead of 100, then wealth might equalize at an acceptable rate.
Another framing of the question might be:
(a) What is the "typical" distribution of wealth within a raiding guild?
(b) How many GDKP auction events would it take to get each member's wealth within 10%, 20%, or 30% (whatever amount you think would result in a basically fair bid) given this distrubution?
(c) How much gold could a guild member earn per week outside of the GDKP system before the redistributive mechanism failed to produce a fair distribution of wealth for bidding purposes?
(d) Is the number of auction events in (b) so large as to make a GDKP system not viable for guild use?
(e) Is the amount of money in (c) so small as to make a GDKP system not viable for guild use?
You seem to be saying that wealth and income disparities are too large for redistribution to overcome. This may be true, but it seems hard to predict without (a) performing some complicated simulations or (b) trying GDKP over many iterations with a closed group.
I think if you implemented some sort of tax system into GDKP it could potentially work well for a guild. To incentivize participation you could link the percentage of runs you participate in to the tax. So if you show up for 90% of the raids you pay a 10% tax on top of your bid, etc. You would probably need to put a floor on this of 25% or else it would become too expensive. You could also start new people at something like a 5-10% tax and decrease that 1 point each time they come to a run.
On top of this you could put a tax on taking more than a single item from a run (an additional 10-25% for each item). Combine this with a reasonable maximum bid amount (so that at least half of your guild could bid maximum on an item without going broke). This wouldn't prevent your richer guild members from taking choice pieces first, but it would at least help to drain them of their funds equalizing the field. You also have to remember that guild members who only play just enough to raid might be willing to forgo having first choice in pieces if it means they get a significant income just from attending guild raids.
If you were able to balance this well I think you would find that your smaller pursed guild members would only need to go 1-2 raids without making significant bids (not no bids, as some items would ultimately be less expensive because they are only appropriate for a small number of classes) before their bidding power on a single item would be just as high as the richest guild member.
Combine this with a reasonable maximum bid amount (so that at least half of your guild could bid maximum on an item without going broke). This wouldn't prevent your richer guild members from taking choice pieces first, but it would at least help to drain them of their funds equalizing the field.
How exactly do you envision a "maximum bid amount" working? Say you set the maximum bid to 5,000 gold, what do you do if 3 people all bid 5,000 gold?
Plus, you're killing part of the *fun* of GDKP which is watching an item's price sky rocket while thinking "Cool, I get 1/25th of that."
'Maximum bids' can be used for specific BOE items that aren't really worth bidding on anymore. Items that are difficult to auction without using unusually small increments, and just add unnecessary time to your run if you try. For example, a raid leader might say handle Crusader Orbs now in this manner: "Random 100 if you wish to purchase a Crusader Orb for 300g. I have 5 collected this run. Everyone can random, highest rolls win - trade me the gold to receive the item. The highest roller gets the option to purchase anywhere between 1 to all 5 of the orbs, and the remainder are offered to the next highest roller - and so on - until all 5 have been sold for 300g each."
Perhaps you could have sold the Crusader Orbs for 330g, but the difference is negligible - and speeds up time if you do a bunch at once. Same approach works well for Enchant shards. Replace 300g with whatever a fair price is (compared to Auction House value) that anyone genuinely interested in the item would pay. Maybe 70% of AH prices for example.
Putting effective maximum bids on items, outside of specific cases like this, doesn't really make much sense.
'Maximum bids' can be used for specific BOE items that aren't really worth bidding on anymore. Items that are difficult to auction without using unusually small increments, and just add unnecessary time to your run if you try. For example, a raid leader might say handle Crusader Orbs now in this manner: "Random 100 if you wish to purchase a Crusader Orb for 300g. I have 5 collected this run. Everyone can random, highest rolls win - trade me the gold to receive the item. The highest roller gets the option to purchase anywhere between 1 to all 5 of the orbs, and the remainder are offered to the next highest roller - and so on - until all 5 have been sold for 300g each."
Perhaps you could have sold the Crusader Orbs for 330g, but the difference is negligible - and speeds up time if you do a bunch at once. Same approach works well for Enchant shards. Replace 300g with whatever a fair price is (compared to Auction House value) that anyone genuinely interested in the item would pay. Maybe 70% of AH prices for example.
Putting effective maximum bids on items, outside of specific cases like this, doesn't really make much sense.
I've found the best way to handle low value BoE stuff is to pool it all. While 1 Crusader Orb or 1 Abyss Crystal isn't worth much, it's easy to get a larger bid for a 'package' of 2 Orbs and 3 Crystals (for example). It's also in my experience, much easier to do with GRM.
I've found the best way to handle low value BoE stuff is to pool it all.
Yes, this is what I do with all Crusader patterns, orbs, shards, and leather. I sell the "special prize package" as the very last auction. Even including the time needed to link the package's contents to raid chat so people know what they're bidding on, and a brief delay so they can plan accordingly (I wait 30 to 40 seconds), this still saves considerable time over selling each item separately. Each package sells from 4000-8000g depending on the contents.
I haven't seen any Primordial Saronite or patterns drop in Icecrown yet. I might or might not sell saronite the same way depending on how much each one is worth by then.
This could happen. The question is essentially how quickly the resdistributive mechanism of GDKP could overcome any initial wealth advantage that a character might have in a relatively closed GDKP system. The answer to this question mostly depends on the initial wealth disparity between guild members and the weekly income of characters.
If, for instance, one character has 100,000 gold, and the other 24 have 100 gold, and no character were earning income, then it would taken many iterations for the wealth to equalize because the wealthy character need only bid 101 gold to win any given item. If the 24 members have 5,000 gold instead of 100, then wealth might equalize at an acceptable rate.
Another framing of the question might be:
(a) What is the "typical" distribution of wealth within a raiding guild?
(b) How many GDKP auction events would it take to get each member's wealth within 10%, 20%, or 30% (whatever amount you think would result in a basically fair bid) given this distrubution?
(c) How much gold could a guild member earn per week outside of the GDKP system before the redistributive mechanism failed to produce a fair distribution of wealth for bidding purposes?
(d) Is the number of auction events in (b) so large as to make a GDKP system not viable for guild use?
(e) Is the amount of money in (c) so small as to make a GDKP system not viable for guild use?
You seem to be saying that wealth and income disparities are too large for redistribution to overcome. This may be true, but it seems hard to predict without (a) performing some complicated simulations or (b) trying GDKP over many iterations with a closed group.
I don't think it is so much about finding the 'true curve' here or something like that. The simple fact is that you can have two people who attend 100% of all raids in the guild, but one hardly plays outside of raids, and thus doesn't earn much gold, while the other had 9 alts and does 25 dailies on all every day (ok, that is a lot of time farming gold, but still possible).
It is quite clear that outside raid factors are going to play in a fair bit too much. Yes, the less active members (who still raid as much as others) will be able to buy gear from the gold earned through the raiding, however they will earn much less than the very active members. Is it fair to penalize people for things that don't really have much to do with raiding (if they show prepared with food and flasks etc)? In that case a lootcouncil might be a better option since that allows for loot to be distributed to the nice friendly guildy who helps everybody, but perhaps isn't the best raid etc etc. Heck that friendly guildy might in fact be very helpful with his gold too, being quick to buy stuff for people when they might need it. He is then put on a backseat because of that. Factors completely outside raiding. Guilds are more than raiding in many cases.
To me at least, there is a little too many potential problems with it (I'm sure 95% of the time there won't be many issues, but when they happen it is going to suck royally) in comparison to the gains (poor raiders getting a chunk of gold on 'crap loot' nights).
Has anyone ever used GDKP as a guild loot system, and if so, how well did it work?
Although the guild fat cats might have an initial loot advantage, it seems like the system would quickly reallocate wealth so that even the poorest guild members could win new loot. Additionally, the beauty of GDKP is that you never lose. You just get cash instead of an item.
This might also be a convenient way for the guild to raise money. A guild could simply impose a small tax on the pot. Although this would be understandably frowned upon in a pug, players might be more willing to see a cut go to the guild instead of an individual. Especially if the guild allows patterns and orbs to be auctioned through the GDKP system instead of just stuffing them in the guild bank.
IMO, the core tenants of GDKP don't mesh well with the goals of your average raiding guild. Most raiding guilds are progression centric, and as such, choose a loot distribution system that gives them the greatest advantage in terms of progression (i.e., loot council, dkp, etc). Most raiding guilds would be pretty unhappy if their tanks or healers were missing out on loots because some rich hybrids wanted to gear up their offspecs.
Now, that being said, there is certainly room for GDKP in some guild settings- I just don't see it as the primary loot system for progression guilds. For example, a guild focused on 10m content could benefit greatly by hosting 25m GDKP runs to gear up their raiders and cover the cost of repairs/enchants. A 25m hardmode guild could host normal mode or last-tier content gdkp raids to gear up alts. Finally, a more casual 25m guild might choose to use GDKP as their primary loot system, for the exact reasons that a hardcore raid would never use it- GDKP is completely capitalistic, so any member, regardless of how casual they are, has the opportunity to win any drop, assuming 1.)they can pay for it, 2.) no one else is willing to pay more.
12/04/09, 9:23 PM
