and tried this evening to get a simple Onyxia GDKP run going, just to bring the concept and explain what it means. Well, a previous poster was right, this was a giant pain in the ass, and I wound up canceling that run.
However, I'm using the Vek forums now as a signup sheet, and taking about 10-15 guild members alts, many of whom are quite well geared, to a GDKP ToC 25 run on Sunday, and I'll let you know how it goes.
I was surprised at how much resistance I got in trade chat, contrasted with how little resistance I'm getting on the forums. It seems that those that read the forums are much more knowledgeable than the the mouth-breathers in the general channels.
Blackrock can have a incredibly immature /trade chat at times, probably worse than many realms due to its size. But even as I type this post, i'm seeing GDKP runs being formed online ingame via trade chat - and nobody says a word, not one complaint nor any type of resistance. It's as accepted as people saying "LFM Naxx" - yet trade chat has just as many trolls/mouth-breathers as any other server would have. Many people reject new concepts and change initially, but it doesn't take much to sway them. All you really need is a couple successful runs under your belt (which may be tricky to organise, nobody said it would be easy). The rest will fall into place naturally after that.
I am pretty amazed at the various reactions' realms have taken, it's a full spectrum. The reactions have ranged from realms rushing to embrace/adopt the idea, thrilled the server is starting them up, people demanding spots to go, successful initial runs (Like Blackhand) - to - "I tried to start a run and got laughed out of trade chat" , or "Dont even bother trying this here, our server is not sophisticated enough for these types of runs."
Server culture certainly has a massive influence over things like this.
I weekly run 3-5 Totc-25 pugs with just a /random loot system on Frostmourne. I Honestly havn't heard of GDKP until one of my friends mentioned something about it on the Elitist Jerk forum. When I first read it I thought it was a fantastic idea and I will try and impliment one this week. I do have a few questions though, that I am hoping someone can answer.
Given that I think 99% of my server population, including the 150 or so regulars that I take to my runs, will never have heard of GDKP it seems to me this is going to be one huge marketing exercise. Does anyone have any good tips on the best way to approach this? I don't like to spam trade chat, as it's over-used already.
Well did only 2 today because my normal partner in crime wasn't online to help with more runs but they were both GDKP.
First run notables: 1.5hours, 25.9k gold, trophies ~1.5k, Duel-bladed butcher 1.3k gold (Was unfortunatly on my druid), 1 wipe.
Second run: Just over 1hour, 36.6k gold, trophies ~1.5k, 2x BoE cloaks 4-5k (AH price 7k+) no wipes.
The main time differential was getting what I have to do down better saving ~15mins time, and the wipe saving another ~10mins.
My thoughts on the system is that it's good, it can provide a new pool of players to pug with (V geared + skilled players who no longer need anything, to help carry the run so they get paid) However it requires alot more effort, especially to begin with, on the raid leaders part to organise and manage the loot system.
The main downside I see, is that it is very hard to get wealthy competition for cloth, leather, mail, plate and still get a quick and effeciant raid together.
The reaction so far on Scilla has been decidedly negative. We've yet to do a run, but our first ToC 10 man has been advertised for several days in-game and on the realm forum, and yet we have one person from outside my guild signed up at this point. The reactions have tended to be an equal mix of "SCAM!" and "WTF, why pay for ToC 10 gear?", with a small handful of people expressing interest, although that so far hasn't translated into signups.
It's entirely possible that the problem is me doing a poor job of selling the idea, given that a couple of guilds do regularly sell gear and achievement drake runs. So presumably there is a segment of players with gold to spend and a desire to gear up an alt/offspec/whatever, but they're not signing up like I'd hoped. If someone has had success making in-roads on a server that was initially hostile to the concept, I'd love to hear the approach you took.
I took the approach of making the post easy to read, and even took a few pot shots at myself in a funny way in part of the post. So far the reaction has been positive, with only one person asking a question that was easily answered in the OP. If you look at the last post, I already have someone I don't even know posting on their main to defend the idea and / or advise people to read the OP.
Also, the two posters who said they want to bring an alt are also posting on their mains, and are both from respectable guilds on lightbringer. I think the reaction you are likely to get is all about how well explained the system is in the OP. I can't wait to log in tonight and see how many in-game mails I have.
The reaction so far on Scilla has been decidedly negative. We've yet to do a run, but our first ToC 10 man has been advertised for several days in-game and on the realm forum, and yet we have one person from outside my guild signed up at this point. The reactions have tended to be an equal mix of "SCAM!" and "WTF, why pay for ToC 10 gear?", with a small handful of people expressing interest, although that so far hasn't translated into signups.
It's entirely possible that the problem is me doing a poor job of selling the idea, given that a couple of guilds do regularly sell gear and achievement drake runs. So presumably there is a segment of players with gold to spend and a desire to gear up an alt/offspec/whatever, but they're not signing up like I'd hoped. If someone has had success making in-roads on a server that was initially hostile to the concept, I'd love to hear the approach you took.
It strikes me that this system really isn't suited for 10 mans at all. You don't get as large a pool of bidders in your raid, the pot is generally smaller, and the instance takes just as long to clear. Enough of your 'core competent' players are going to be taking up soots in a 10 to the point where you'll hardly have room for buyers at all, and will really end up just carrying one or two people for pretty middling sums of gold.
I updated/rewrote many sections of the OP since it was originally posted here. I've read people elsewhere comment that 'the GDKP concept is so complicated, look how much text it takes to explain'. Thats simply not true. The concept is simple - it's just being explained in a thorough way - with an eye towards pre-emptively explaining many common questions and concerns.
Concur with Feist-Mok, GDKP can work for 10 mans - but 25 is where it really shines. Personally I think the "Gold Run" system is probably better to 10 mans. (Where you might take 7 workers and 3 buyers, and split the gold the buyers pay among the 7 workers only - very different to GDKP). It can most certainly work, however.
An EJ member here kindly translated the OP into Hungarian. With the help of the Google translator, you can (almost) understand the OP and most the 100+ responses people say here: FS! � A GDKP rendszer . I've also seen some German translations on the WoW EU forums.
The reaction so far to GDKP on Dragonblight has been a swift no. I've gotten a few whispers from some people; but overall no one is interested.
I am theorizing this is largely because most of the current top guilds on Dragonblight already organize alt runs in which they invite pugs. In some cases (like my own guild) we do ToC-25 3-4 times a week.
I also believe several of the top guilds on Dragonblight do not use any form of DKP/LC at all and use the /roll system. So the atmosphere on Dragonblight has been fairly resistant.
If the raid-needs of the general public are currently being met, it doesn't seem like they're too interested. That said, my main motives for wanting GDKP is not the money-earning aspects of it; I'd like to see it become more prevalent in order to buy the "choice" items.
Originally Posted by arison
Everyone should start from the same place and rise based on their abilities, desires, and schedule. No one plays MMOs to *be* powerful, they play MMOs to *become* powerful. It's the journey, stupid. The rarer loot is, the more cherished it is when you get it, but only so long as there is a reasonable expectation to get it. The rarer loot is, the better it feels when you kill a boss or when $AWESOME_TRINKET drops.
This is pretty much what has been portrayed on Thunderhorn EU horde side. Although many people have shown interest on Alliance via the forum, no one has been interested in it except one of my guildmates.
Juste tried it today (with 2 days notice on the forum and on the /trade).
Overall very few people were interested (we barely made it to a group of 25) but there was a last rush the day of the raid. This issue might also have been due to the odd time of the raid (17h00 - 18h30 a thursday afternoon).
Then we did it and ended with a 46250 gold pot (partly thanks to the tank trinket on FC and the caster trinket on Anub) which was 1850 gold for everybody and 0 wipe (5-6 dead max during the raid).
Guess what, I already had 40+ whisps to know when the next one will take place and all those who came today want to come again.
I guess the idea might be to make the first one, then things go smoothly if the first one went well. At least on a small server as ours (Sargeras EU) were the "top" guild raid on their own and pugs are mostly crap (vnot 1 in 10 of them kill Anub).
I can only suggest that you try, it's really a very good way to pug (much better in my opinion than a pug with /rand100 loot system).
If that can help, we add those kind of loots :
- T9 token : from 2300 to 2600 gold
- Caster trinket (Anub) : 10 000 gold
- Tank trinket (FC) : 3200 gold
- Crusader orbs : from 700 to 750 gold
- 1H caster mace (Anub) : 3800 gold
Seems to me those are pretty average values for such a raid which is consistent with an average server like ours :-)
I'm totally planning to try this as soon as my computer comes back from repair. As far as I know, no French-speaking server is using it today (and trust me when I say that the server culture there can be quite different).
In the meantime I translated Tyrian's original post in French, because I feel like it's a concept that can fail horribly if misunderstood. I hope you don't mind me posting the full translation here, as it could help my fellow French-speaking players (a lot of them read those forums. A lot of them only understand half of it, though).
I'm a Feraldruid from the German servers, and I've taken quite a liking in your concept.
I've been able to put a PUG Group together for TotC10man, and we'll try the system this Saturday.
Actually, I was getting a little more reactions than I expected, and opened another Thread for the 25man version.
Unfortunately, I didn't quite get as many responses as I'd have wished for.
Still, I'm eager to try it out tomorrow, and I hope that the word will spread fast.
Overall, I've gotten a lot of positive Reactions.
And after all, I'm already a big fan of this idea.
Does anybody have some tricks for me how to get a little more players interested? Especially geared ones not in my guild?
(we still have TotC locked for mains)
Hey everyone, really great post and since I've read it about a week ago, I felt I really wanted to give it a shot on my not-so-big french server.
Here's how it went :
For about a week, I spent every day about 1 hour advertising in /2 with 3 consecutive macros explaining the concept. I never managed to get a group going until yesterday. I'll skip the drama / whine / taunts / whatever I got spammed with during this process.
Yesterday afternoon, at long last, I managed to get a group going for Ulduar 25, mostly random people, not very well geared or familiar with the instance (Myself, I'm in a pretty big guild pve-wise).
We started around 2:30pm and decided we'd stop at 5, wherever we may be at that time. We managed to kill Hodir and all the bosses before him. You should've seen the first pull we did on Hodir, it was dreadful, but we killed him with no one dead on the third :-)
Really great experience, people were confident, me and my guild being quite well-known on our server, and we ended up with a ridiculous pot of 3700 gold, but definitely had a great time ! I definitely agree with all the people who say people are more patient, more eager to concentrate and try new things (we asked all the casters who had some pvp pieces or frost resist pieces to use them on Hodir because we had trouble keeping them alive during Frozen Blows).
---
I got thrilled with the first experience so of course, this afternoon, I decided I'd try again, the group was completely different except for about 3-4 friends of mine, and we headed for 25-ToC this time.
We ended up with a total pot of about 32k gold, Death's Choice was sold for (only?) 8k gold, and tokens for about 1k gold each (I got 2 myself ).
I think I got lucky with the (pretty much) random people I invited, but still, the group was really efficient and focused, we only had one wipe on the twin valkyrs, a really fun afternoon of playing, and a whopping three i245 items for my little druid reroll for a mere 1kgold !
Hopefully, this'll start a trend on my server and I get to organise more and more of those runs (I got waaaay too much money and 4 characters to stuff :p)
Great work Ele. I read your translation via Google French-to-English Translator and you did it very well. (And google seems to translate french much better than german/hungarian).
The only downside to your trend, Husnan, is you'll never be able to get Deaths Choice again for 'only' 8k gold when word gets out. That is an absolute bargain. The upside is, of course, you'll be making big profit off of those who pay the big bucks instead.
Does anybody have some tricks for me how to get a little more players interested?
To paraphrase some previous posts:
- Split your message and tailor it to the types of players you wish to attract (This post: GDKP Run Discussion: Spread it to your Server )
- Make realm forum posts to generate interest
- Use ingame /trade channels (Yes, you will get trolls calling it a scam).
- Lead a normal random PUG raid, and casually bring the topic up on vent (For people to talk about, discuss - and generate interest)
- Encourage people to read posts like the above one. Its one thing to read the OP that explains it, it's another thing to read people who have actually done it and have a personal review to give.
- If you have regular, respected PUG leaders on your server: Consider approaching them privately and encouraging them to read the OP here
- If you have some big, well progressed guilds on your server: Consider making a thread (linking to the OP) on their respective guild forums. This will generate some internal guild discussion among the geared raiders (Who have lots of alts and connections). Or find out who usually leads their alt/pug raids and show them the link to here.
- Find out who your friends and supporters are
The last point is especially important. Your supporters might be people you don't know, but help spread/defend/explain the concept for you to others. Strike up a rapport with them, and let them help you.
First of all, thanks for this great inspirational thread!
We had our first GDKP-Run today on EU-Onyxia, and I would call it an absolute success. Onyxia is, in my estimation, well populated but quality-wise not really good. My guild is trying Anub25HC at the moment and we're sharing the top spot with another Alliance and a Horde guild progress-wise. No other guild on the server comes close. None has killed Anub 25 Hard yet.
I was doing the raidleading together with 2 other experienced friends from my guild - just to spread the stress a little
At first people were hesistant to join because of the new concept (been stuck on 18 people quite a while), but after about 45 minutes of advertising, explaining and literally thousands of whispers we had ourselves made a well rounded group.
Only 6 of the members were known to us, all the rest was completely random.
We had everybody open a trade window with their gold before inviting them, everybody had at least 1000g or so to spend, some even 30k or more.
We made Teamspeak mandatory and explained everything one last time before starting.
The run went smooth, no wipes and just 3 deaths altogether (at Valkyr Twins). All other bosses went flawless, even Anub'arak, which left us very positively surprised.
We got many encouraging whispers afterwards, and we are definitely planning more runs the coming weeks.
For managing the bids I used GoldRaidManager, which made things really easy.
Here's a list of our loot and the winning bids for them:
(For some reason the heroic loots are displayed, but I figure you get the idea.)
In my opinion we weren't too lucky with the drops (no hard-sought weapons or trinkets). The 2 BoE-Items went well and we were quite pleased with the bids on the trophies.
Do you find the prizes for these items typical? Or are there major discrepancies between servers?
We expected the last trophies to be more expensive than the early ones and were right with that estimation. Does this happen regularly?
Do you find the prizes for these items typical? Or are there major discrepancies between servers?
We expected the last trophies to be more expensive than the early ones and were right with that estimation. Does this happen regularly?
Prices fluctuate a lot from day to day I've noticed on Blackrock, last week I did 3-4 GDKP runs and the runs earlier in the week the trophies went for around 4000-4500 and the ones later in the week went for only 1500-2000. I guess it just depends on how rich and how desperate people are for the loot. From what I've noticed the later trophies go for a higher price as well.
I ran one of these on my server(Wildhammer) a few nights ago and it went surprisingly well. We one shotted everything up to Anub where we had some very weak DPS( <2500) holding us back. Once we replaced them, which was very easy with the prospect of gold for replacements, we killed him in one shot as well. Even the people that had to be removed were fine with it and understood why it was happening. The night ended with a pot a little over 30k and 1215g per person. After the raid I was getting lots of tells asking if I'll be doing it again next week and saying how great of a time they had. We had one item go for 6k(healing mace off Anub) but also had some items go for only 300(min bid).
My only concern was the GoldRaidManager addon. I'm thinking/hoping I was using it wrong as I had to enter the boss and loot into it manually and it didn't link any of it itself. Is it supposed to be like this or should it just automatically populate the list for me?
Just did a GDKP run on Mok'nathal US, which is about as backwater as backwater servers get. It went great. We did a 500g min bid, and most items went for ~750-1200. Trophies tended towards 1500-2k, which I expect to rise as word gets out, and we had Anub drop a caster trinket that went for 15k, which inflated our pot very nicely. Final split was 1850 for all involved, some folks got loot, and an awesome night. We even one shotted every boss!
Lessons learned: Bring a more diverse group that will have more use for a variety of loot. GRM is a great addon, but kind of wonky. I need to learn to use it better. And taking raid signups in advance will definitely make managing the group itself much easier.
My only concern was the GoldRaidManager addon. I'm thinking/hoping I was using it wrong as I had to enter the boss and loot into it manually and it didn't link any of it itself. Is it supposed to be like this or should it just automatically populate the list for me?
If you go to the chat area for the mod on curse, the author posted a link to a manual. When you click on a boss and see a loot window, you should see a button above the window that says Announce Loot. That will announce the loot in raid chat and enter it in GRM.
I did my first GDKP run today. I created a realm forum post and started a calendar event a week ago. I had plenty of people signed up. There wasn't much resistance to this idea in trade chat. The final pot was 1683g each and a big chunk of that came from a 16,000g Death's Choice. I was hoping for a bigger pot, but we did have some very very good people there which made the run smooth, but a lot of drops went for minimum. For next week, I'm going increase the minimum from 100g to 500g and try to bring in a few more lesser geared players willing to spend lots of gold.
If you go to the chat area for the mod on curse, the author posted a link to a manual. When you click on a boss and see a loot window, you should see a button above the window that says Announce Loot. That will announce the loot in raid chat and enter it in GRM.
I did my first GDKP run today. I created a realm forum post and started a calendar event a week ago. I had plenty of people signed up. There wasn't much resistance to this idea in trade chat. The final pot was 1683g each and a big chunk of that came from a 16,000g Death's Choice. I was hoping for a bigger pot, but we did have some very very good people there which made the run smooth, but a lot of drops went for minimum. For next week, I'm going increase the minimum from 100g to 500g and try to bring in a few more lesser geared players willing to spend lots of gold.
Thanx!
I was actually just coming on to say that I had figured it out. I use Xloot and didn't pay much attention to the announce button above the frame. Just thought it had come with an update for xloot or something. Decided to click it tonight and BAM! there it is. Should make the next run go a LOT better
Just ran one today on Stonemaul-US for the Twilight Drake, and a smaller guild-only one after for the Black Drake. The 25-man got 906g per and the 10-man got 1520g per, for all of an hour and a half of raiding (and waiting in between the 2). The issue with doing mount runs is making sure you have high enough buyers to make doing a single boss worth everyone's while.
In the future, I'm considering setting a surcharge on people who don't have the TwiVanq/Nightfall titles just to keep cash flowing to the well-geared players just looking to make some money. We had maybe 5-10 new TwiVanqs, if I charge 500g that's 100g-200g to everyone which is decent and only cuts into 10-20% of their winnings anyway.
We expected the last trophies to be more expensive than the early ones and were right with that estimation. Does this happen regularly?
It's predictable player psychology. A typical player mindset is, "I wouldn't mind a trophy, but I really want Reign of the Unliving/Deaths Verdict. Every boss drops a trophy, so theres no need to bid on the first one off Icehowl. I'd rather spend big money to get the trinkets, so i'll hold out until we do those later bosses and see if they drop it." Then those players arrive at Anub'arak, and realise that nothing big they have been holding-out-for has dropped. So they decide to bid more aggressively on a Trophy instead with the attitude, "I may as well come away with something from this run!".
Another important aspect is that players know how valuable the Pot is towards the end of a clear, but not at the start. This can heavily influence how much people are prepared to spend. A typical scenario is players might be only spend 1.5k on a Trophy off the first boss afraid the Pot-split might not be much larger, but happily spend 3k for one off Anub'arak - when they know the Pot-split is Worth 2-3k and they'll break even.
To capitalise on player trepidation on newer server trying GDKP, buy trophies off of the first couple bosses.
We went to TotCrusader yesterday with a 10man-Group.
Played it save, no horribly undergeared people, min Bids not too high.
The run was a breeze, I even spent too much tme explaining as everybody was familiar with the bosses already.
We got out after about an hour, 2k Pot, 200g for everyone. Most of the money came from a Priest.
I got no negative Feedback, it was a good atmosphere, and everybody said they'd do it again.
I'm relieved =)
I won't do 10man anymore - too much of a hassle (RL freaks me out - I'm always nervous ).
Also, I cancelled the Raid for today, but started a new Thread for next Sunday, as this Weekend,
a PvP-Event in Halaa crossed with the Raid and quite a few people that were interested had ID already.
I already got some requests and will post here for sure how it went.
It was interesting to suddenly have people from elite Guilds ASK for a place in your Randomraid =)
Been venting this idea with my friends and raiding community on Argent Dawn, EU.
Definitely going to try this out and will start advertising GDKP today, to see how people react to it.
Not a very known person, so don't know how well I'll be accepted as a raid leader, but.. Gotta be a first for everything, no?
Yesterday I led my first successful GDKP pug in totc10. We cleared it in 50 minutes with only one wipe which was due to an overly ambitious tactic on Anub-Arak. The pot was fairly small, only 208g for each of us. But most of the people in the pug only came for the emblems anyway, so to them it was all bonus. Funnily, we ended up with 7 guildies and 3 randoms, two of which joined the guild afterwards and were excellent players. I really wanna try this on 25 man, since there's obviously more gold in it that way. But finding ten players who liked the concept was hard enough. I don't wanna think of how it will be to find 25.
10/21/09, 3:40 AM
).
).
