silents47

We've been doing these on Gorgonnash-US for a couple years now, and the gold has been stolen more than a couple times, but the vast majority go well. Some of the more recent runs that have been ninjaed have had the gold taken back and split among the participants by GMs, surprisingly enough. I've found the runs, which we call GKPs, to be a good way to gear new 80s, or a great way to make money if you go as an already-geared character.

The only way they've impacted the server economy has been when people use their share (sometimes up to 10,000 gold) to try to completely take over the herb/enchanting mats/ore market, but it's never actually had a lasting impact.

 

Exodus-SG

Pretty sure GKP run started from China and not Korean. Been seeing GKP run since MC days.

The largest single bid comes from Tempest Keep, the pheonix mounts go for 200k in a recent run. It was a 14 men run, so everyone walks away with 14k+ of gold.

However, it definitely has some impact to the economy, as quite often, the big spenders are gold buyers. There will be more gold circulating in the server as compare to server that don't have gkp run.

 

Tinwhisker

Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems to me that GDKP runs require that a fairly large and stable raiding population already exist on that server.

Reading through the first post on and looking at my own server, I don't think this would work on Scarlet Crusade. While there might be some of each type of player listed, I have a hard time believing that there are enough. It appears to me that the entire system is based upon there being at least a moderate turn-over of players in the runs. And to support that turn-over rate you need a larger population. With only 14 guilds on SCr that can beat ToC-25N, I just don't think it would work on our server or any other with a small raiding community.

That's not to say that the raid community is bad, we have some top 20 world achievements but the actual raid population is not large enough to support this I think. (Scarlet Crusade does have a very large population though and as a result of some of these factors, the economy is generally more inflated than others.)

You're a lot of DPS, you know that? You wanna' earn 14 achievement points the hard way?

 

Kaacee

That probably just changes the types of runs that will be profitable and popular. Running Naxx on a backwater server would still be a steamroll, and probably attract enough people. Anything is better than a pure PUG. Running this type of raid might also help your guild in recruitment, and start building a more solid base of raiders on the server.

 

Lanthon

One thing I haven't seen mentioned, but think is a fair question: Is there a fair way to compensate the raid leader for the effort? I mean, fielding tons of tells every time you log on takes a lot of time outside the raid. Has anyone tried an extra share for the leader (splitting 26 ways instead of 25), or keeping the unsold items (vendor/shards), or simply deducting a fee from the pot prior to splitting?

This causes ethical qualms, I'm sure, but what is mentioned here entails a lot of work for the raid leader. I suppose getting 4k gold as part of the pot split is nothing to shake a stick at, but you're getting the same gold as participants, who have a much easier job.

 

silents47

On my server, some GKP raid leaders started imposing a 10-15% "Tax" back in Ony/MC, meaning they took 10% off the top for themselves, then split the gold 19 or 39 ways, depending on the raid. Usually, though, people aren't willing to go on a run where their "hard-earned money" is being split unevenly, especially the geared people who are helping to carry the buyers. Most of the successful runs I've been on have just been even splits (as it ends up being a metric crapton of money for 2 hours of work anyway), or have resulted in forum posts about OMG NINJAED GOLD when a tax was imposed without warning at the end.

 

Daenerys

I keep going back and forth about this statement, but I'd like to propose that GDKP actually could cause inflation. My reasoning is that you have players who have large pools of gold that they *cannot* spend in the absence of GDKP runs because there just aren't enough BoE options available. The gold they are holding is essentially out of the market. When you introduce GDKP runs, you allow that gold to be re-introduced to the market, and it gets distributed to other players who may have need to actually spend it (the guys who can still upgrade through BoEs or still need to powerlevel a profession).

To me, it seems similar to how the Fed works here in the U.S. One of the key monetary policy tools they use is purchasing or selling government-backed securities. Since they can print money whenever they want, they can influence inflation simply by printing money and buying securities with it. This increases the overall money supply, and hence you have inflation (yes, it's more complicated that my example in the real world, but that's the idea at least).

A player in full BiS (minus his coveted Death's Verdict) sitting on 200k is going to play a similar role to the Fed when he joins the GDKP run and throws 20k at the other raiders who still need to buy Crusader Orbs or flasks or whatnot.

Hopefully this isn't derailing, because this topic is extremely interesting (to some of us, at least).

 

Malthes

One thing to consider is how many other gold sinks blizzard has added to their game. 5k epic flying, 20k mammoth mounts, Dalaran teleport rings, etc. It's conceivable that casual players who profit off these runs would spend their money that way, instead of buying six glyphs, 8 enchants, Epic gems, and two stacks of flasks of the AH. I know of players who are decent raiders, but have never taken the time to get their epic flying, just because that's 5k they aren't spending on raiding. GKP raids change that equation quickly.

Anyway, my minor point is that Blizzard's gold sinks and vanity items could offset some inflation on AH prices.

 

Fargom

This is a really amazing thread, I already run a ToC25N run on sunday afternoons, I bet I could convert it over to GDKP with no problems. I already get 30-35 people of all types who want to run, and have a solid group of 10 geared players (tanks/heals/dps) who I could probably get to go for the gold.

This is on the Lightbringer server, Alliance side. Its a release day server with multiple established guilds, a large population and even a guild that is competitive in world rankings. I don't think I'll have much of a problem since I'm already a semi respected pug leader. I'll report back with how it goes, I'm going to work on converting my normal run to GDKP over the next few weeks. Thank you very much for the informative post.

 

Tyrian

Look forward to hearing updates in upcoming weeks, Fargom. Things like: How much money you made, What problems and challenges you faced, what successes you had, whether other people embraced/rejected the GDKP concept. Will be especially interested in how easy/hard you felt it was to convert your regular random PUGS over to the new format. Alot of people (and raid leaders like you) will be reading this thread thinking, "Ok I understand the concept, but does GDKP really work in practise?".

The first run will be exciting. People will be curious and everyone will probably have fun trying it out to see what the fuss is about. Your pot might not be that huge on the first week (see Alcaras' post on Page 2) - but remember the first few runs set the scene and it's word of mouth/reputation that will push that up in future. Don't expect to start raking in numbers like I mentioned happen on Blackrock right away on your first run, people might be nervous about spending initially - until they are more familiar with the concept (aka that you're not trying to scam them!).

It's the subsequent runs after your first which have the most potential. Thats when your momentum and word-of-mouth really starts to kick in.

 

rucvv

This is an argument that people had who were against gdkp system when it was first introduced in Korea (this is back in ZG in vanilla WoW). This thought sounds very logical (still to me it sounds very logical) and would have happened this way,
but somehow, it didn't.
As I have stated before, Koreans ran gdkp for over 3 years and this inflation did not seem to happen, when comparing the prices of AH and even the prices of loots in gdkp runs to the ones in US servers (I have checked on forums, wowhead, etc.).
What I find interesting is the reason why likely inflation causing factor, gdkp, not causing inflation (or at least, how it is balanced out).

Sorry Tyrian, I'll delete this post if you feel uncomfortable with the derail.

 

Allev

- Many of the core raiders are replacing farming (gold creation) with GDKP runs.
- Many of the few-upgrades raiders are hoarding the gold just as much to buy in future GDKP runs.
- There are still fixed costs to raiding (repairs, gems on upgrades, enchants, consumables) which remove gold from the market. I imagine the under-geared compensate for this a little by flasking up even on more trivial content.

These factors probably counteract the inflationary effect to the level of trivial on the scale of the entire market.

 

Robertthorn

How do you distribute gold at the end of the run? Do you mail it? Open trade 24 times?

Is there a mod that will track whom you've traded gold to? I'd hate to lose track when several thousand gold is at stake. Maybe a trade is canceled because someone moves out of range and you don't catch that the money didn't transfer. Maybe you skip a name accidentally. Maybe someone is trying to trick you into getting a second cut.

 

Tyrian

It's split on the spot. A common way is:

- Everyone stands in close range of the Raid Leader
- Nobody trades the Raid Leader, he trades you
- He gives you your share of the pot
- He kicks you out of the raid (aka your done, you can hearth now)
- He Repeats x 24, until everyone has been kicked out of the raid

You won't have any problems doing it this way. Remember most people are unlikely to act stupidly, because they will want to get reinvited in future.

 

rihkama

For those interested on EU GM policy about the pot maintainer disappearing with the gold: World of Warcraft (en) Forums -> Policy on GDKP intervention

 

kaytie

EDIT: Damn you Rihkama and your fast fingers.

 

Tyrian

What the GM"s are saying applies to any run, they always will recommend you 'only group with your friends, guildmates and trusted players'. That is the standard response people will get when items are ninja'd so to speak, such as the Mammoth mount from VOA.

Given that many new raid leaders will look to/link to the OP I updated it with a small section on a written agreement at the start of the run. This is exactly the same as a random raid leader announcing the loot rules early. Basically if you're with a trusted raid leader, things like this probably arent necessary - but its 'good practise' to do regardless. Especially if you're doing it on a new server with people unfamiliar with the concept.

In light of this I recommend a simple macro to /rw just before your run starts, along these lines:

Thats fair and covers all the important bases clearly. I probably should have been clearer and put this in my OP initially, most good GDKP raid leaders already do this.

But now it's explicitly clear, its good practise to make an agreement such as this. It protects raid members and the raid leader in the event he has to remove poor players. But, as those familiar with the GDKP concept will keep mentioning, if you group with trusted pug leaders its pretty rare to have any sorts of issues in a GDKP run. If you are on a server new to the idea, and with a PUG leader you have never heard of - its not unreasonable for you to expect an agreement such as this to be announced at the start of the run.

 

Kegsta

Great thread as usual Tyrian, I'll be considering doing a GKP hard mode TOTGC25 once we're able to kill anub25 hard in 1 night. That would be some serious money if you could put together a beasts killing raid, as the next few bosses are pretty cake but it will require very skilled and geared alts from a few major guilds, A buy in system may work for this as you won't be bringing any leechers at all.

We were very surprised going from Blackrock Alliance to Horde that they had never heard of GDKP runs, considering how effective and popular Maegara’s runs on Alliance always were.
We ran one the first week on horde, and funnily enough 50% of the pugs we got were from alliance, so getting the word out is the most important aspect I would say if you want GKP to be a success on your server.
It went fine but most of the horde was very poor and every single item we needed went to a guild member for 500g-2k which was cheap as chips for us. The pot ended up being a lowly 1.6k or something each.

However since then we have been running 2x in guild TOC25 so everyone usually has there alts locked now and I don't think I’ve really seen a GKP since.

Also I wouldn't advise someone with a lot of guild responsibility take on the job of leading a pug GKP every week, you have enough to deal with with 30-50 people bothering you all week about raids and other random stuff, you really don't need another 50 pugs PMing you 25 times a day trying to find out when the next GKP is.

 

Psyqo

Has anyone begun keeping a list of servers/factions that are currently running GDKP? I was going to just post a reply to ask about the US-Hyjal server, Alliance faction, but I figure instead of stinking up the thread about just one server, it'd be nice to see a list of what servers are doing it and be able to add to that list once we hear about a new server doing runs.

 

Atea

We gave this a try on US-Stormrage yesterday night. The raid was slow to fill up because of the massive opposition we received in trade chat but things were smooth once we got started. The bidding was really fun. Our only problem is that, in our hurry to get the raid going, a few people weren't gear-checked and weren't pulling their weight. We had to stop at Anub because of a lack of DPS.

As you suggested, I am keeping a list of the good/rich players and will keep inviting them while trying to weed out the bad players. Word is spreading around and the majority of the raid seemed interested in doing this every week.

The split at the end was only of 1.2k gold for our first run. I am confident that it will keep going up as we get more selective in who we invite, ensuring more drops.

Thanks a lot for sharing this here Tyrian!

 

Liebestod

I have to say that, as an economist, I kinda love analyzing DKP systems. This is a great solution to a mechanism design problem and I don't have many suggestions for refining things in a parsimonious manner. My one possible suggestion would be to institute an upfront fee for players that will be added to the pot (and hence given back at the end) in order to ensure performance. If you find that groups are easy to fill up you could probably jack up the fee to a clearing level - not in order for any individual to profit more, but to ensure that you get players who are both serious about the run and are experienced enough to have a fair amount of gold.

I guess one other possible thing is that you want to be able to select for players who will take all the items and/or maximize the total size of the pot at the end. I'm not exactly sure how you could do this without selling the rights to items (if they drop) in advance, though, which would be a hassle. It's an interesting problem to consider, however. Imagine having an addon that allowed you to enter willingness to pay values for all items you were interested in, and then raid leaders could somehow formulate groups by maximizing the total expected revenue of the raid given the highest valuations across all objects. I doubt such a mod would become popular, but it would be pretty brilliant if it did. Actually, it doesn't seem that infeasible (as you wouldn't need to have your whole raid use it for it to be useful), just kinda wonky... if anyone finds this to be an interesting idea, though, send me a PM.

 

Tyrian

I was wondering when an economist would chime in! Inflation and so forth are great topics, it's a great discussion to be had in public here! For those interested in inflation discussion, you can look to "US Blackrock, Alliance" as an example of a high population, well progressed server that frequently does GDKP runs - for any analysis of prices and player behaviour. We'd love to read any conclusions you make.

Regarding inflation, remember that alot of the gold is split to people who might have no intent to use it. If a bunch of bored mains go who have 20k already, and earn 5k for a total of 25k - are they all suddenly going to rush out and spend it? Probably not. People shouldn't get the impression that suddenly because everyone earnt X thousand g, they all will rush out and inject that into the economy. Some will, but many won't.

I will add that GDKP can also have elements of 'a poker game.' If you join a GDKP raid and you have 100 000 g, would you tell everyone? Of course not! If someone asked me how much i'd pay maximum for Deaths Verdict, I wouldn't tell them. Players aren't stupid - they don't want to be bidded up or have people aware of their wealth. It's more beneficial to rich players if lots of 'average wealth players' are in the raid unaware of it, in the event something drops and they could easily out-buy anyone. Usually only the raid leader might know a players wealth.

Most players just go on a run to hopefully 'buy stuff they want' and wouldn't think much about topics like this, but you can still play-it-smart in the process.

 

Liebestod

I actually did my undergrad thesis on MMO economics several years back, so I've thought about a lot of these issues. I'm gonna try to keep my comments to the topic of the GDKP system for now though. :P

There shouldn't be any harm in people knowing you have 100k gold. Either you have the highest willingness to pay or you don't and there's no reason to conceal the information (since it's not like you actually have to bid your willingness to pay, and if you have serious competition you would anyways.) Hell, it might even be in your interest to say you have an absurdly high willingness-to-pay if you can discourage those who could bid against you from being in the run. "Yeah, I'll pay 75k for Death's Verdict. Oh, 3 people just dropped? Looks like I'll get it for 100g now."

[Edit]

Actually, if you're doing a sealed-bid first-price auction, then there probably is reason to strategize via withholding one's true valuation. I'm guessing this is the case, although I'm not sure it's the best way to do things. I took it for granted that it was actually an English (ascending) auction, which reduces the incentive to hide a high valuation but which may also reduce the amount of revenue collected into the pot.

 

Tyrian

Through the miracle of Google, and the power of Elitist Jerks, we can see now some of the signs of GDKP spreading around.

1 - World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> GDKP Runs

This is someone simply saying 'Hey lets try GDKP on our server' on their realm forums. The reactions of some the following posters are typical of what you would receive in /trade chat initially, "Terrible idea!". If you plan to start GDKP runs, read this thread - people will say the exact same thing to you. Some other people are interested and see the value immediately, whilst a few are just curious. Notice that the OP was started on an alt, and many people respond on alts in turn. The OP only pasted a tiny portion of my OP, thus alot of these people responding didn't get a thorough explanation the OP gives, and their negative attitude/reaction shows as a result.

2 - World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> GDKP ToC25 Run Monday 7PM Server

A Premonition player starting a GDKP thread, via their main, on their realm forums. Premonition is a respected world class guild. He didn't quote the whole post, but thoroughly attempted to sum up the concept to those who might be unfamiliar. Notice immediately that the response of players is very mature and most of them are on lvl 80's replying.

- World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Any interest in GDKP runs?
- World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Monteljr's 25 ToC using GDKP system
- World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> GDKP - How it works
- World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> GDKP Run Discussion, Need some help/feedback
- World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Sam's (GDKP) - Naxx 25 - Sat 10/17 @ 8pm
- World of Warcraft (en) Forums -> GDKP Runs on Kazzak - Saturday 24/10
- Welcome to Spinksville!

Expecting more to come! As expected, most people are either 'curious or interested' in the concept. Only a small minority flat out reject the idea - that actually understand it first - the rest are usually trolls who put up barriers immediately upon reading about buying and items in the same sentence.

A few people have also PM'd me saying that they are trying GDKP as well.

If people are going to quote only a small part of my OP - or fail to thoroughly explain GDKP in their own posts - you need to expect that you will meet more resistance. More people who might reject, don't understand or appreciate the concept. One of my favourite responses that i've read was this one, "This has got to be the most retarded loot system i've ever heard of. I really hope whoever's dumb enough to do this gets ninja'd..... for alot...... ALOT....... ". People who have no gold and hate the idea of buying stuff often forget one key thing: Nobody is going to force or make them go to GDKP runs.

It's no surprise, so far, that the most positive response thread has come from someone posting from a main with a good pre-existing raid leader reputation, in a respectable guild - and who elegantly explained the concept. Given that this thread is approaching 20 thousand views, we should encourage people to use best practises. You should always remember this, whether you lead a GDKP run or whether you wish to go on one. This ingame agreement/statement is what GM's will use to resolve any issues that could arise in a GDKP run.

*** Only make or goto GDKP runs where the Rules are explicitly stated ingame at the start of the run by the Raid Leader. (Mentioning them on vent alone is not good enough, they must be stated ingame). ***

If the raid leader refuses to do this, simply leave the raid.

These are some more topics id love to see people flesh out and debate the merits of:

- Do GDKP runs cause inflation and/or have any other effects (positive or negative) on the economy?
- Do GDKP runs help 'make people better players? (Encouraging people to research items they need, as Gold is precious and you can't simply /random on everything. Refer to this post for some more details: GDKP Run Discussion: Spread it to your Server )
- Do GDKP runs increase the amount of raids done on a server? (More mains will come out of the woodwork to raid, who might not ordinarily go to PUGS. More people start raiding overall). How does this affect raiding and the server economy?

 

KraxisSingular

I have introduced the concept to one of the driving forces behind some of the most successful pugs on Runetotem EU (Horde). The initial reception was one of not only acceptance but of hopefulness.
Hordeside is decidedly smaller than Alliance and the server itself isn't very progressed (only a handful guilds have killed Algalon 10 and I think only one guild has the Ulduar 25 drake). To top that off a major segment of the population are Italians that unfortunately are very insular and in many cases don't speak English well enough to understand the details when pointed out. The reason for this popuation is simple enough, because they aren't great at English they migrate to where there are many whom they can communicate with. But I digress.

I will hopefully have some good news soon (ie. we try it out).