But finding ten players who liked the concept was hard enough. I don't wanna think of how it will be to find 25.
Advanced planning really, really helps here. Advertise a few days out, around the same time that you plan on hosting the run, so that they players that are likely to be online at the given time see your adverts. Use the calendar to collect the names of everyone interested, and overbook your raid by about 10-15 people. Then, a day or two before the raid, sort through everyone who "accepted" the invite- confirm your backbone players, and put any seriously under geared players on standby. If all goes well, when raid time comes, you should only have to pug in a few DPS slots.
TrackWarcraft.com is very useful- they offer a quick of armory data for a single character, but more importantly, they offer multi-character lookup. They have an in-game mod that crafts the required URLs for you, but regrettably, it doesn't extend the default character interface. you can roll your own URLs in the format of:
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.
The first week I ran Naxx as GDKP I managed to round up 23 players total... We earned 750g off the split at the end... it was hard getting those 23.
The second week (yesterday) I ran Naxx as GDKP I had 40 signups, a good portion of them showed up 10-15 minutes late and we actually started 10 minutes early. I had 5 people in raid who didn't sign up at all, just expressed interest at raid time. The split was 615G, and the run was infinitely smoother. (3 hours vs 5 hours)
I've now got people randomly /whispering me when I log in.
Thanks for the responses, aleyro and Zanthor. Trackwarcraft certainly looked useful enough, much easier than looking up achievements and such in armory. I did plan ahead quite a bit, and was spamming trade channel for an hour or so almost every afternoon the week before the run. Got a few whispers, but some didn't have the gear or the money, others couldn't make the raid time and I only had some 5-6 signups a day before the raid. Only a few of those who signed up were logged on by raid time, but a lot of guildies showed up in the last hour.
Anyway, everyone who was in the run liked it and I already have 9 signups for next week. That last sentence was probably a bit overly negative, cause it really looks a lot brigther now. I don't think I can get 25 people by next weekend, but in 2 weeks it should be more than doable. I want to take things slow rather than get a reputation for making useless groups. Spinebreaker EU is a pretty small server.
Ran Lightbringer's first GDKP run today. TOC 25, split was 1370g each. Everyone loved the idea and I mostly attracted other "top quality" raiders, who knew what to do. Zero wipes, 6 deaths overall, I now have people sending me tells left and right for a spot next week.
Several of the players were officers of other raiding guilds on the server, I fully expect to see other GDKP runs pop up as people get sat from mine. Thanks again for the great OP.
We're very eager to see more people reply to this thread, especially if you fall into the following points:
- You haven't tried, but you're eager to start trying it soon (And have questions/concerns/comments)
- 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?)
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.
First of all thank you two for the excellent writings!
I haven't tried yet, but I'd love to, my main concern is the population of my realm is medium at best, most of the topguilds are running TOC25 with the mains AND alts, leaving a possible GDKP run with participants in low-ish gear / skill. On this realm PUGs can even fail in TOC10 so I can't see it working. Note that I'm guildless at the moment so I can't really get proper main tanks / main healers for these runs, as they are locked with their guild.
How would you start it up? "Spam" /2 couple times a day that this is going to happen at <insert clear date, time>, and people interested should whisper me for further discussion? Or make a post on the official realm forum, giving all the details for people that are interested? Or both at the same time? Can I steal your post mentioning you being the original poster?
The answer to WHY I'd like to see these happening: #1 offspec loot #2 to make money #3 gear alts up
#1: I'm prot specced but playing healer in arena and I'd love the trinket from Jaraxxus. Either I'm going to do pugs as tank letting the master looter know I want holy spec but he'll forget / others will whine about it / etc. Or either I'm going as healer while my tanking gear could benefit the pug more -> doesn't make sense to me.
#2 and #3: obvious
First, we have to narrow our definition of inflation a bit. Let's narrow it to the AH, since that's the benchmark of prices for tradable goods. This hypothsis hinges on the idea that GKDP doesn't create inflation because the value created is inacessible to the AH.
First, let's define at what AH-accessible value is created. Apart from what Daenerys proposed (gold redistibuted to players who might have tradable good demands), the only value created relevant to the AH is the actual money drops, vendored items, and AH-ed BoE item drops. That's not significant compared to everyone's real concern: pots of tens of thousands of gold.
GKDP runs deal primarily in non-transferrable goods i.e. BoP items. This isolates it from AH, since the AH is all about goods transfer. As far as the AH is concerned, I just gave my friends 5000g (or whatever). It doesn't care that I got a weapon for it, because that weapon will only affect the tradable goods economy when I enchant it, gem it, shard it, and/or vendor it.
What GDKP actually does is monetize a portion of the WoW gameplay that didn't exist before, and does so in almost complete isolation from the AH. Incidentally, it also largely isolates one server from another; the only exploit would be to transfer your character to a server with many GKDP runs (see next point), get your items, and transfer back and leech gold.
What an increasing number of GDKP runs on a given server will do is cause GKDP (and therefore gold) deflation, where demand drops (fewer people are looking for Death's Verdict) and supply increases.
What an increasing number of GDKP runs on a given server will do is cause GKDP (and therefore gold) deflation, where demand drops (fewer people are looking for Death's Verdict) and supply increases.
As fewer people are looking for those items, there should be fewer GDKP runs. After some period of an initial spike in demand, the supply of those BoP items should stabilize and scale with the number of GDKP runs.
First, we have to narrow our definition of inflation a bit. Let's narrow it to the AH, since that's the benchmark of prices for tradable goods. This hypothsis hinges on the idea that GKDP doesn't create inflation because the value created is inacessible to the AH.
First, let's define at what AH-accessible value is created. Apart from what Daenerys proposed (gold redistibuted to players who might have tradable good demands), the only value created relevant to the AH is the actual money drops, vendored items, and AH-ed BoE item drops. That's not significant compared to everyone's real concern: pots of tens of thousands of gold.
GKDP runs deal primarily in non-transferrable goods i.e. BoP items. This isolates it from AH, since the AH is all about goods transfer. As far as the AH is concerned, I just gave my friends 5000g (or whatever). It doesn't care that I got a weapon for it, because that weapon will only affect the tradable goods economy when I enchant it, gem it, shard it, and/or vendor it.
What GDKP actually does is monetize a portion of the WoW gameplay that didn't exist before, and does so in almost complete isolation from the AH. Incidentally, it also largely isolates one server from another; the only exploit would be to transfer your character to a server with many GKDP runs (see next point), get your items, and transfer back and leech gold.
But many GDKP items are substitutes for BoE craftables. If one can get Skyweaver Vestments for 3k, one won't spend 10k on Merlin's Robe. So the guy who picks up Skyweaver Vestments in GDKP cost the AH some sales of the mats for Merlin's Robes. This causes deflation on BoE gear prices
The runs also may increase the total number of successful ToC25 raids on a server, increasing how many badges people have and the number of Crusader Orbs and Crafting Recipes in circulation. This deflates those prices further.
Finally, I would argue that the distribution of wealth affects its velocity. There is a limit on how much one can spend outside of a GDKP run. If I've got 200k gold, I'd wager that 150k of it is just sitting there, uninvested and unspent. Mr. Moneybags at goldcap has a high savings ratio. By contrast, players with 2k gold spend their gold, and have a low savings ratio. If you hand a 100k-gold player 2000g, easily 1500g of it will do nothing but sit in the bank. Because there's no loan mechanism, that money is out of circulation. If you hand a poor (sub 50k gold) player 2000g, in all likelihood only a few hundred of it will make it into the bank - the rest goes back into circulation, while that player takes that 1500g and buys enchants or gems or powerlevels a profession or something.
Increased circulation of money would be the cause of AH inflation. The amount of money hasn't changed, but because it's in more hands, it has more entry points into the market, causing inflation.
Originally Posted by Tinwhisker
Originally Posted by Kushana
What an increasing number of GDKP runs on a given server will do is cause GKDP (and therefore gold) deflation, where demand drops (fewer people are looking for Death's Verdict) and supply increases.
As fewer people are looking for those items, there should be fewer GDKP runs. After some period of an initial spike in demand, the supply of those BoP items should stabilize and scale with the number of GDKP runs.
Items like Death's Choice or Dual-Bladed Butcher are like 20% drops. Even at 5 GDKP runs per week, that's still only 1 DDB/week. I suspect Icecrown will drop (lessening interest in ToC25 gear) before even a plurality of players who want those items badly have them.
[...] The amount of money hasn't changed, but because it's in more hands, it has more entry points into the market, causing inflation.
Seems like you're of two minds about the effects of GDKP runs on inflation.
I'm going to point out a few unsubstantiated assumptions on which your arguments rest:
1) That GDKP runs redistribute wealth from rich to poor. In actual fact, they redistribute wealth from people who received items to people who didn't (or received fewer, cheaper items).
2) That GDKP participants who receive money (net) will spend it on transferrable goods (the AH). This assumes that they had a need for transferrable goods, but couldn't meet it because of poverty. Yet these (poor?) people were invited to a GDKP run on the premise that they might spend money.
3) That greater wealth equality results in increased velocity. I can't find any papers to back this one up.
It's standard economics that increased velocity can be a contributor to inflation. You just haven't shown (except by dubious anecdote) that GDKP runs result in greater AH velocity.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I have a lot of gold versus the "poor" in WoW. It's nothing impressive to have amassed and I'm not really trying to impress anyone. But if I get new gold it's got a 100% savings rate. The primary cause of inflation is "too much money chasing too few goods". If GDKP hands me money that otherwise was chasing BoEs on the AH, of course it has a negative affect on inflation.
But before we get all excited, there's that "day I decided to spend some of the gold". Maybe it was after I ran in a GDKP run and picked up 2k. So I look on the AH and, lo and behold, that idiotically overpriced Cloak of the Iron Council suddenly looks good for my warrior alt. Uh oh, I'm now causing inflation.
The person of this story isn't about me, of course. It could be generically applied. The AH is an incredibly inefficient market with prices that swing gigantically from day to do. This is most especially true of expensive BoEs. Perhaps the guy wanting to spend 2k on the AH did spend it in the GDKP run. So in fact, his action was deflationary. But my windfall from being there was inflationary.
It's hard to imagine that too many people are going to be able to reliably predict any aggregate effect on inflation from a redistribution of gold. By contrast, there is a great history in WoW of inflation coming with new batches of dailies -- which create too much money but no new goods to chase. GDKP moves some money to the losers. And it definitely makes crafted gear somewhat less necessary if it cause ToC runs to form that otherwise were not going to form: the drops replace the craftables. But it also makes people richer to buy the craftables. You sure you want to forecast which force is more powerful?
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
First, GDKP has been done on french server since Sargeras is a French server :-p
Secondly, I can only advice strongly against putting such a huge piece of information as a "recruitement post" on your forum for a gdkp run.
In my experience, people won't even read a tenth of it
What I did was post a very small message on the forum (only quoting the sumamry of what a gdkp run is (5 lines) and a detail of what the minimum bids will be, and of course the date and time of the raid).
With that I did a first GDKP run in 3 days and another one (with my reroll) the day after.
I plan to run one GDKP each week from now on and i already receive tons of whisp to know when the next one will be.
You don't need to explain why people should attend such runs and why it does or doesn't create inflation on the server, 99% of the player don't care (and you can just ignore those who do). Just state that you are doing a raid where loot goes to the highest bidder et select carefully those who will come (in order to have the dps to assure the kill of anub) and after a first successfull run, you won't need to worry about looking for people or explaining what the concept is.
Last edited by Kastagne : 10/26/09 at 7:07 PM.
Reason: Details
I'm with Mideci on this, I have enough gold, enough to not actually seek more out. I run a fairly tight netgold result per week (+200-400g or so). But I would love to earn more while having fun (dailies are not fun for the 30th times).
What would happen if I gained 2-3k per week due to ToC 25 GDKP (since I can barely pick up any pieces in those runs)? I would begin to spend it on gear for my various alts, likely in other GDKP runs... Essentially I wouldn't really spend on the AH. I would also likely buy stuff like mounts.
Also, when ICC comes out I think GDKP might in fact see an upsurge in popularity. The many guilds will likely leave normal ToC 25 completely alone, I know that my guild is very likely to. What does that mean? The pool of 'carriers' in the GDKP runs suddenly increased a lot. ToC is as if made for GDKP, fast, simple and not very long. This won't change. If people want to gear up fast it will remain the place to do it. And I will be rather surprised if Death's Choice/Verdict won't retain it's position or at the least be within very reasonable distance of the best ICC trinkets. Remember Greatness, it is still second or third best trinket for some specs. There will be a huge market still, and I dare say it might be bigger for all those unlucky melee/hunter raiders that never got it in the guildruns and now they are 'stuck' in ICC. The horror of running /random PuGs is going to drive them to GDKP where they can get their one item almost for sure. *Memory of Gruul's Lair and DST*
As I see it, there will be an increase in 'carriers' and 'one item buyers', essentially the strong people. That isn't too bad since it allows you to customize the raid a lot more, and the chances of failures go down heavily. This is for the average servers. For big servers with very good progression I can imagine the goldvalue of ToC will drop.
So you're saying that GDKP runs are deflationary?...Seems like you're of two minds about the effects of GDKP runs on inflation.
I don't have a general opinion on whether it causes inflation or deflation overall, I'm just looking at individual effects. Someone smarter than me can figure out what effects dominate what other ones in determining whether runs are inflationary or deflationary or neither.
Originally Posted by Kushana
I'm going to point out a few unsubstantiated assumptions on which your arguments rest:
1) That GDKP runs redistribute wealth from rich to poor. In actual fact, they redistribute wealth from people who received items to people who didn't (or received fewer, cheaper items).
2) That GDKP participants who receive money (net) will spend it on transferrable goods (the AH). This assumes that they had a need for transferrable goods, but couldn't meet it because of poverty. Yet these (poor?) people were invited to a GDKP run on the premise that they might spend money.
Most of the discussion upthread focused on GDKP runs with large wealth variations, where wealthy undergeared people buy most of the loot and poor overgeared people are along to make sure the run terminates and collect a slice of the pie. Obviously much of this breaks down for gold runs where all participants have roughly equal wealth.
GDKP participants who make net gold from a well-designed run are going to be either (1) not rich enough to win any contentious bids, or (2) not interested in any loot that drops. Again, I'm falling back on my core assumption of a mixed-wealth GDKP pug, wherein (2) is comprised of good raiders in it for the money.
Originally Posted by Kushana
3) That greater wealth equality results in increased velocity. I can't find any papers to back this one up.
It's standard economics that increased velocity can be a contributor to inflation. You just haven't shown (except by dubious anecdote) that GDKP runs result in greater AH velocity.
In real world economics, wealth equality and monetary velocity aren't going to be related, because real-world economics has lending and investing. If the Orgrimmar bank offered loans for people to level professions or buy epic flight, then all that saved gold would stay in the money supply. However, all the gold in people's WoW banks just sits in giant piles. I'm not an economist by training so I don't know how to explain this precisely, but loans and investing in the RL economy keep saved money in the money supply. The money in my bank account at Bank of America is loaned out and invested by BoA (or like 95% of it is), keeping it circulating. WoW gold in banks just sits there outside the money supply. If we accept that high-income people have a higher savings rate than low-income people, we quickly see how wealth equality can alter monetary velocity.
Anyone happen to have some screenshots of GoldRaidManager in action they could send me in PM? I tried to take a screenshot of the bidding process after our raid yesterday and my game crashed without saving it.
Player Question: I've heard from different sources that if the rules of a Gold DKP system are posted before a raid and the raid leader ninja's the gold pot a GM can intervene and restore the gold to the raid. Is that true?
Blizzard Response: The Game Master staff does not frequently intervene in looting disputes; however, we may provide assistance if a player blatantly attempts to scam others by promising a loot method that is not upheld. Accordingly, I encourage you to speak with raid leaders and master looters before participating in a raid; if they choose a looting method counter to your desires, please respectfully decline the invitation to join their raid. If the looting method is not upheld, open an in-game petition so that our Game Master staff may review the issue further and take appropriate action in accordance with our policies.
This was from the US forums, the previous quoted GM response was from the EU forums. For this reason, as stated in the OP: If the Raid leader doesn't clearly state the rules ingame at the start of a GDKP run, leave the raid immediately.
Just started a thread in my realm forum to see if it's appreciated on my server.
So far, I got 6 Invites going out by spamming the /2 Trade Chat. Lots of Trolls on my server, though.
interesting, but just the thought of how tiring it would be to manage and run it, and keep things organized makes throw up. There's easier ways to get gold with less headache.
interesting, but just the thought of how tiring it would be to manage and run it, and keep things organized makes throw up. There's easier ways to get gold with less headache.
GDKP raids are no different to lead than a regular raid aside from the fact instead of asking people to /roll or bid "dkp", you are using a mod and/or spreadsheet to calculate the end pot.
From a raid management perspective however, nothing changes. The first GDKP your server runs, or you personally may run might be exhausting but once you have a stable and trustworthy reputation as a GDKP leader on a specific day at a specific time the organisation of said runs become a non-issue. For example, unlike a lot of the newer attempts at GDKP formation, Blackrock Alliance runs are specifically organised within trade chat akin to any other PuG. Because they are run at generally the same times people know to 'expect' them and your raid fills quite easily.
The major trouble you will encounter forming these runs regularly is having to decide on your 'regulars' and the influx of people who will be prepared to spend on items they need. You just need to find a balance that's right for you.
Some people come to leech achievements, gold or badges from the 10-15 "geared" people on the run and not bid on anything unless it's insanely cheap. If you encounter these kinds of people just set yourself up a list of the under geared people who have said they're here to spend and do not do so accordingly, depending on the gear that drops of course.
Now that you have 2-3 lists; regulars, spenders and a blacklist your life running a successful raid has been made considerably easier.
TLDR: 1 hour planning your first run, 1-2 hours running the raid is going to net you an average of approximately 2500 gold on a server like Blackrock. If you can make that kind of gold in that amount of time, I commend and applaud you! But ~840g /hr isn't exactly bad
Have people succesfully used this system for Ulduar? The reason I am asking is that, let's face it, ToC 10/25 normal is a very easy instance fight mechanics-wise (I don't like the word 'faceroll') and is also very short. You can carry people through it. I would argue that more than half of Ulduar bosses are much complicated than any ToC boss. How do you deal with that? Do you only invite people with Yogg achievement?
GDKP seems to work better for short instances with lots of drops.
Assuming you are very fast, Ulduar will still take about 3,5 to 4 hours, remember this is still some sort of PUG.
People will have to leave for their kids, their work, their cat or whatever and they will cry about not getting their share of the pot.
What you could do for Ulduar ist to set up 2 Raids, 1 to Auriaya and the other day one with keepers to yogg.
10/25/09, 12:54 PM
