Additionally you could ask the attendees you don't know to show you how much gold they are bringing via trade so you can ensure they don't bid too high.

It seems like putting more than a tiny amount of thought into that is missing the point. It'll be pretty apparent if some douche does it more than once, at which point you write their name on the naughty kid list and stop inviting them. Runs like these sound great for everyone involved, so that alone will motivate everyone to play nice and not ruin the nice thing.

If it happens at Twins, you just can kick them from the run and tell your buddy who happened to log on, "Hey I had to kick a jerk at Twins, wana come in TOC for 20 minutes and kill Anub'arak - and get about 5000g for doing so"? He won't say no. Or just do the fight with 24 if your raid is geared enough, and everyones individual pot is higher anyway - which will make everyone happier.

Either way you don't lose. I guess theres the chance of them trying to grief/hold a spot in your instance open, but I think as someone said this is making a mountain out of a molehill: its not likely to happen because people want these runs to go smoothly and they want to keep their spot - because its in their financial interest.

As mentioned earlier, showing how much gold you have is often a requirement for joining, if the Raid Leader doesn't know you. I imagine this is usually done to prevent people exaggerating their personal wealth to get an invite - but it can be used to combat this if necessary.

If someone wins a bid for more money than they have, just kick them from the group and sell the item to the second highest bidder. If they don't, then go out of your way to keep inviting them as they're helping you get more money. Doesn't seem that complicated to me.

Yeah I don't think that this concept is being presented here as a wonderous innovation which eliminates every conceivable problem with pugs. You'll still be carrying undergeared scrubs who can't play their class, you'll still be facing RNG drops and competing for items with others, and you'll still wipe if too many people stand in the fire.

The way to counter the above problems is quite simply to form regular / consistant pugs, drawing on a trusted group of players. The problem here is that once players have the drops they want, they'll generally stop turning up. By providing incentives for these players, these runs can offer a much higher degree of stability, not simply through the retention of good players, but also through the absence of the requirement to replace these players with green-geared scrubs. Of course these players are still critical to the run's success, but no matter how big their banks, you still don't want 25 of them at once.

I'd still be hesitant to dive head-first into using this system in pure pugs, but think it could be an excellent option for alt runs, etc.

They will intervene in any case where there is a clear written agreement regarding the loot rules. So the raid leader needs to say at some point "GDKP run, money from bids will be split evenly at the end" in chat for a GM to take action. This also applies to normal main spec roll pugs.

So regardless of what loot rules you're using, get the leader to state them in raid chat and any ninja is actionable.

Unless it was someone with a solid reputation the buy in you're describing would just set off "I'm going to get scammed" alarms in my head. If you're evenly distributing the gold at the end that buy in really accomplishes nothing but encouraging people to stay till the end; which is not needed since the system is designed to be very appealing for late joiners making replacements easy.

It could also possibly cripple the purchasing power of people with a low amount of gold; who might be the very ones continually driving every items price to their max amount of gold.

TooltipWealth - Addons - Curse - might be a handy addon for running one of these - adds a players 'most gold ever held' stat to their tooltip. While not 100% reliable, if someone tells you they're bringing 20k to spend on loot and the most they've ever had is 3500, well, you've got an easy way to spot it.

This is Onehan from Blackrock

I've recently found out that gdkp system is spreading to other servers, and I being a gdkp starter and promoter (in US servers) I'm very happy to see this happening.


I had a few things that I had to deal with while introducing gdkp system to the server, and I hope my tips would help you starting a gdkp in your server.


The major concerns I consider most important are


1. Raid Management
2. Social Management, and
3. A STRONG WILL





1. Raid Management

As mentioned in the original post, successful run is the most important factor contributing to the "word spread".
Hence getting the "good" players are more important than getting the "rich" players in the beginning.

Now, getting the good players would be hard, since you'll hear so many people crying about paying gold for loot.
Most of these people generally fail in reading and understanding, and you need some helpful friends paying them out to make them look stupid and make clear explanations to raid why this system is fair.

Make sure that you are not the one giving the crap. Your reputation is important as a raid leader - and you giving crap contributes 0% to the word spread
And obviously your friends are reasonable and explain kindly if people are asking nicely)

To make a successful raid you need at least
well geared, well experienced, and smart tanks (all of the tanks)
1~2 geared and good healers who does more than their assigned heals
and 2~4 strong dps who breaks their bar through the damage meter.

Assuming rest of the raid are normal and you (unfortunately) have some failures
these people are needed to lead the whole raid.


Getting a full group IS an issue if you are newly introducing gdkp system to the server. Although you try your best and make everyone clear that the system is very fair and works fine, people are still unsure and are very tempted to leave and do leave the group when they see another raid forming on /2. So in order to speed up the invite process, you will unavoidably invite the bads (bads that are under-geared and not well experienced to raid but are still interested in gdkp system).

You will need all the wide raid view, recount analysis, ensidiafail analysis and such to accurately point out who screwed up the raid and caused a wipe. You have to make sure to give the impression to the whole raid that
it is HIM who fails. NOT YOU.
This is very important because by doing this, you don't lose trust from people and also this creates a hole where everyone can dump their rage from wiping (I'm not talking about mad rage here. People just need something to blame on - and make sure it's not on you) enabling the next try kept focused and not scattered.

If this does not fix the bads, there is a solution in gdkp by announcing
"NO GOLD SPLIT IF YOU SCREW UP ONCE MORE".
You'll be amazed how well people perform after the warning especially when the split becomes huge.

(Koreans made pug Hyjal possible by having 500g penalty when failing to fall - I haven't tried the penalty system yet but forfeiting gold split worked fine)


You will also encounter some minor issues such as
- People inflating the prices that are not related to their class (People do complain but you can't do much about it. Those people are also taking risks while trying to inflate the price to the "true-worth" value).
- People bidding after the countdown (DO NOT accept the late bidders. Not accepting will cause no harm to your reputation but accepting may. Make sure you slow down the count for highly competitive loots).
- People watching big bids get excited and start typing numbers in /ra (Tell them to talk in /s and not ruin the mod).
- Early leavers wanting split (no split to early leavers - keeps people stay until the end)
- Bidding process taking up precious time (Set appropriate minimum bid/raise to avoid people raising with small increments wasting time. Adjust the countdown pace to speed up the bidding process but allow enough time for people to bid. As soon as the auction is closed, open the next one and do the trade while the auction is still processing).




2. Social Management

Once you have a successful run, you'll get hundreds of whispers from people to join your raid. You need to be friendly with the good players, rich players, and supporters (supporters as in they say good things about gdkp while the most server population still cries about paying gold for loot).

You need to arrange the raid time when you can get most of the useful people

When useless people whispers you, you don't have to be friendly, but still reply kindly.
Don't give a word that he/she will get an invite, but give an impression that he/she can get invited when you spam on /2.
He/she might be useless now, but can be useful later on.
(A lot of these bads will gain a new perspective to the "worth" of gold. Gold is now dkp, and it is precious. They will start planning out the item list that he/she wants; Doing researches in EJ, mmo, etc. to figure out which items are optimal for him/her, so he/she doesn't waste gold on shit loots. Also by studying the stats and the mechanism of tanking/healing/dpsing, they will eventually become good players. ----- This seems like an ideal situation, but it does happen quite often in a long run. ----- This is one of the biggest differences what gdkp pugs have comparing to rolling pugs where many people just spam /roll for the loots they don't have mindlessly).

You will get in contact with a lot of people who know you but you don't. Manage your friends list and always leave a note so you know who to look for your next raid.
(eg. RICH - GOOD - holy priest, average - GOOD - resto druid, RICH - bad - rogue)

When your runs become popular, there will be more than enough people asking you for an invite for the next run. Invite these people first (only the good ones) before you spam on /2. If you are good enough, you will have more than 25 people doing this, and yes, they will stay and wait for replacement, even though you don't ask for it. - Say nice things to them when they don't get the opportunity.

You will be liked by many people and it is important to manage yourself to maintain the popularity. Even though you are super, one day, you are going to make mistakes, you will DC during the raid with 50k gold pot in your inventory. You will be positioned where people do not consider you good, and in case of DC, even though it turns alright at the end, the word can spread wrongly (Chinese whispers). Your fans will control the crowd and keep your reputation intact. These people might also offer you fish feasts or flask which come in very handy.


I personally don't use the calendar to organize groups, because I don't think I can free myself from wow once I start using it.

Plus, try to run at a set time so you have high chance of getting these good people regularly.
(This is most likely Friday night, Saturday night or Sunday afternoon).




3. A Strong Will

The thing is, no matter how well you do, it takes time to spread the system (spread can be done faster if you have more alts running gdkp, I only had 1). It took me around 1~2 months for someone to run the second gdkp pug and another few months to stop people asking "what's gdkp?". And more, you may get this anti-gdkp group forming, saying bad stuffs (nothing logical, they just to rage and troll) about gdkp in /2 and pst you "you greedy c***".

In my opinion, you need at least 3 solid gdkp raids going (excluding you) where u can stop putting in effort to promote gdkp system but the system promotes itself.



it is a game and why tank all these suffers?

Well, I was tired of 3-4 nights/week guild raid and it was hard to go on and off especially as a warrior. But the general pug quality sucked too much (back in TBC) for me to get in. I happened to read the Korean wow forums saying that they have successful BT/Hyjal pugs (before the patch) while US pugs were still struggling at ZA, and the major factor for the difference in pug quality might be the gdkp system.

I was shocked and amused, and thought if I bring this system to the server, I won't have to do 3-4 nights/week guild runs anymore, I will be able to raid whenever I want, and also I will be able to catch up with "dkp" by putting in extra effort - I hate rolling and losing forever and ever, especially to noobs.

Considering how much I like wow, and remembering the nights I sat for raid instead of socializing, feeling like eating elephant crap,
gdkp system seemed like the only way for me to get both wow and real life.

So there I went, promoting gdkp.
I did all the things I have said above up to the point where I thought I have promoted enough that gdkp system will promote itself. Then I quit wow for a while for real life issues, and came back, and guess what, there are gdkp pugs forming almost everyday! (and even spreading to other servers)
I can now raid anytime I want and all the gdkp pugs I've joined since I came back were all successful! (I have joined some rolling pugs but they were not successful. It is a tiny sample size to make an conclusion but I believe that gdkp pugs generally have higher quality than normal pugs).



All I'm trying to say here is that
you are going to have a hard time (probably not as hard as mine since you have this great post from Tyrion to link)
but whatever your goal is (e.g. gdkp system, freelancer raider, enhanced social management, etc.)
don't give up, then you WILL achieve it
and the outcome will be great!








Hope this was useful.
Good luck and have fun!

I am curious if you have seen this directly impact the prices of the auction house? My first response to reading this was on servers where this was popular it would distribute wealth more evenly among the population. Resulting in inflated prices in the auction house, due to having more players with significant capital and a seller population aware of this fact.

To another degree bind on equip items would become less desirable, you could simply buy what are often stronger items in a raid. So we would be looking at two opposing effects in the auction house with larger sums of gold in the middle.

My gut reaction is it would even be worth transferring to a server where this is popular. Rake in cash raiding then transfer out.

//KasumiRevy

Gdkp does not create any gold and hence it does not affect the AH. However, the gold/dollar ratio decreases because of the increased flow of gold (proven by entire Korean servers where they ran gdkp pugs for over 3 years).

I'm not sure you're entirely correct in this, a more even distribution of wealth will increase demand of medium prices items, since a lot more people are able to buy those. That is in wow as well as in real life. If before 10% of the population had 20k gold, and 90% had 1k gold, whereas 100% of the population now have 2,7k gold, then you will obviously have a lot more buyers for the items priced at 1,000+ gold. I am not on a server where gdkp is used, so I wouldn't be able to say whether it has an effect in practice, but saying that it's not possible for gdkp runs to have an effect on server economy would definately be wrong.

It'd also create a perverse incentive to have other people fail, so as to grow the size of the pot.

Somethings I've learned from building DKP systems of varying sorts of the years:
- Good players will make even the worst incentive structure work.
- Bad players will make even the best incentive structure fail.
- Filter good players from bad by invites, not by your DKP system.
- Control for behavior (odd bidding, point hoarding, what-have-you) by invites, not by your DKP system.
- Keep the system elegant, simple, and easy-to-understand.

I think that about sums up the best answer to most of the previous posters "what if?" comments. People don't generally like complex rulesets and will be wary of them. Even if people don't mind rules, it can feel cheap and take the 'fun' out of raids. Remember people also go to GDKP runs for fun, you don't want to suck the soul out of your run by turning it into a regime. Thats not fun.

Everyone can make a mistake now and then, you don't want to be eaten alive for it.

One simple rule: "If people consistently fail on silly stuff, they might not receive their share of the pot and/or replaced from the run" is enough. Thats fair and people will appreciate it. Remember good worth of mouth and reputation is crucial to GDKP runs, and part of that includes having fair rules.

We're very eager to see more people reply to this thread, especially if you fall into the following points:

- You have tried bringing GDKP to your server (And your take on the success/failures/problems you have had)
- You haven't tried, but you're eager to start trying it soon (And have questions/concerns/comments)
- Whether your server currently does GDKP runs and whether it's already part of the culture there (It is on Blackrock, where else?)
- If you just want to see these runs on your server, when they aren't currently, and why you'd like to see them start up (What part of the concept appeals to you?)

Big thanks to Rucvv for that excellent post. People reading this thread wondering, "I wouldn't mind trying GDKP on my server, but what challenges will I face?" can use that as a very solid resource.

Please chime in on the discussion if you have done these runs. Some people want to see/hear of others' successes first, before they consider trying it.

For items nobody bids on do you just DE them and auction off the shards at the end?

What levels do you guys set the min bids/raises? I'm very intrigued by this idea but as my server (Shu'halo) is a younger server and are medium pop. towards the bottom of the rankings in terms of progression I'm not sure if there is enough money floating around to make this profitable enough for the relatively few well geared people carrying the runs.

What kinds of totals are you seeing in Naxx runs vs ToC? Do you do these for 10 man runs as well as 25?

We had our inaugural run on Mal'Ganis last week, and after some diligence in filling the raid group, had a smooth clear of ToC25N.

We pulled from the Elitist Jerks Benefactors community, though we had a handful of folks from Trade Chat (which took some convincing that this was not, in fact, a scam .. being in Serious Casual and having people vouch for me in raid chat helped considerably).

Considering we had only announced and scheduled the run a day beforehand, I was impressed. The pot ended up at 32k, which split out to 1.28k per person.

I did a 10 man GDKP run as well -- the pot was pretty small as we had a lot of druid leather and shaman mail drop, but no druids or shamans in our raid. But it went smoothly and well.

Our next run in Sunday, and interest seems higher as people have caught onto the concept and interest is growing.

(We used:
epics: 300g starting, 100g increment
trophies: 1,000g starting, 100g increment
patterns/orbs: 50g starting, 50g increment
shards: randomed for at the end)

Any tips on slotting the raid?

Specifically: How to delicately ask how much of bank roll people have without asking them to publicly reveal it in a sign-up thread.

I've thought about coding up a simple custom sign-up web app, but would rather have something even simpler.

Do you have people sign up before hand, or just announce and then fill the raid based on who's online and who sends you tells?

One way to look at this is, the vendors will always bid. Minimum bid is the vendor sale value, and if nobody bids that high, the item is actually vendored and the gold added to the pot. Presumably if shards are worth more than the vendor price on your server, some enchanter will always bid more than the vendor price.

The calender works well for your regulars. You can blanket invite your guild. Or manually invite specific non-guild players (vip's, interested players eager to come) in addition. Usually it is scheduled in advance so people can free up the time to go, but theres another good reason: People will farm extra gold early in preparation! (Might sound stupid, but its true. I've commonly heard people say things like, "I need to farm up 6k to take to the GDKP this Saturday").

Instead of asking for a explicit-gold figure, you could ask players to briefly explain/introduce themselves and their reasons for why they want to go:

- Their WoW situation
- The loot they are after
- How badly they want it

It should be pretty clear from their answers what category those players fall into (referring back to the OP). Also im sure people in the BB community like their status there, and they probably won't want to bring that into disrepute by being an ass.

Answers could be,

- "Im a hardcore raider. I just got my Shammy alt to 80 and he needs most slots upgraded. I have nothing else ingame to spend all my gold on!"
- "I really want a few offspec items so my tanking OS is up to standard. Currently it isnt, and im eager to buy these pieces. I need to get this done quickly and these runs sound perfect for that".
- "Im a casual player without much gear, but I farm and play the AH religiously. These runs sound great for me and i'd love to get Tier 9!."
- "I just want Deaths Verdict for my alt. I understand how GDKP runs work and i'd love to come, ill do anything to get Deaths Verdict."
- "Im a raiding main. I can get/have everything I want: BOP, crafted or otherwise - but I still need Grim Toll badly. Ive wanted it for months and never won, id love to come to this run."

Although no numbers were explicitly listed at all, it's pretty clear those players sound like the right types.

Personally I dont think asking people for an explicit gold figure is rude, in this case. Perhaps a more generic 'your spending price range' is easier to swallow for some people instead of a flat number. GDKP runs dont tiptoe around the fact that it's about gold. But If you setup people to give comments like that, you effectively can get the answers you want (without the number).

With regards to slotting order, as Rucvv mentioned theres a general list

- Create the raid yourself
- Invite your Main-tank, Main-Healers and a small selection of geared DPS (The backbone Mains)
- Privately extend a personal invite to your VIP members
- Privately extend invites to other players who have given prior notice they'd like to come (only if you feel they are suitable). As Rucvv mentioned, its more important to get good players initially than rich ones. These players are the ones spreading word-of-mouth like wildfire.
- Open invites up to trade and word-of-mouth through friends. This is the messy bit where you will find yourself having to armory people, check wealth values via trade etc.

Chances are your players will help you fill out the run. Most of them understand the concept by now and they'll know that "My friend with 100k who wants to come" is the right sort of player to refer to you. This is another reason why good players can be better than rich players intially, they know what you're looking for and will help you find it.

Essentially specific people get offered a spot in your raid first. While it might be tempting to just say "just invite the richest players first", a smart raid leader knows that its often the average players (initially) who provide the best word of mouth - which in turn is better in the long run.

Actually the affect to gold/dollar ratio proves my point. If you are going to get more gold to your dollar on these servers it is in direct relation to the inflation the server experiences due to the greater distribution of wealth. Let's not confuse what I am saying with 'making gold', these raids don't make gold. They distribute it.

Of course, this affect is dependent on how wide spread GDKP runs are on the server. Anyone got a heavy population us server that has wide spread use of this method? I can help with your inflation and make a ton of gold and transfer it off at the same time!

OK, I have argued about this topic before, but I think I need to know the clear definition of "inflation". As far as I know, inflation means general increase in prices of goods (and/or services).

In Korean servers, there is no such thing as rolling pugs (there are "some", but you are generally considered stupid if you prefer a rolling pug) and they have started gdkp since Zul'Gurub, so I can tell you the entire Korean servers had gdkp very widely spread for a very long period of time.

Gdkp does increase the flow of gold (i.e. the hidden golds are distributed), but however, this did not seem to affect the in-game economy. I've been asking around the prices of the top list goods in Korean servers and compared them with wowhead price, and I found no significant difference.

So if you are a normal WoW player, you will experience no gold inflation.

However, this did not seem to be true when considering gold/dollar ratio. I saw a lot of people arguing the cause of this (Koreans said they see a sudden drop in gold/won every time a new dungeon comes out - if I remember correctly), and they came with a conclusion that gdkp DOES NOT directly increase the gold flow, but it INDIRECTLY causes increase in gold flow by distributing hidden gold and promoting more people to do dailies, which creates gold.

So there seems to be an increased amount of gold flow, but how come it does not affect the in-game economy (i.e. no inflation)?

Well, I don't know. All I can guess is that since gdkp improves the pug quality (in general) and allows more people to run raids, the increased amount of loot compensates the increased amount of gold flow. And the increased need of in-game goods such as enchanting mats, gems, etc. are balanced out with promoted farming.

If you have any opinions, please shout it out. I'm personally quite interested in this topic.

Anyway, my point is, gdkp DOES NOT cause inflation, at least not in game.




Yes, I'm talking about herbs, minerals, eternals, enchanting mats, raid consumables, and even the prices of the loots in instances. So far I found no in-game inflation that seemed to be caused by gdkp.
And I think stabilized market means no inflation. (gdkp increases both gold flow and the market size)

2 Things may account for the auction house not seeing significant impact:

There are already people moving gold from these servers to others. People with significant understanding of economies may have read the tea leafs early and have set a network up to tunnel this into other places where they can make a raw profit.

Due to the ability to purchase raid upgrades with enough capital the auction house prices would actually fall to a certain degree, if the best you can 'buy' is a death verdict on an alt not a darkmoon greatness.

Rucvv when you mention top list goods , what are you looking at? I would be looking at raw materials. For instance herbs and minerals, consumables etc. This is where I would expect to see inflation.

The point you have about promoting farming may actually be what is helping stabilize the market.

Sorry I am not attempting to derail this thread, it just struck me that widespread use of this method would have an impact on more then just the raiders themselves.