Infraction for DandZ: 2. All opinions should be stated as succinctly as possible.

• Vykromond · 11/17/09, 2:02 PM

Post: GDKP Run Discussion: Spread it to your Server
User: DandZ
Infraction: 2. All opinions should be stated as succinctly as possible.
Points: 1

Administrative Note:

Message to User:

Please don't quote split, it makes posts unnecessarily long and difficult to read.

Original Post:

Originally Posted by Tyrian

Have a look how many GDKP threads there are on the front page of Blackhand realm forums alone: World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Blackhand

Sadly, even on Blackhand things can go badly; read Sturmm's forum thread. Happily, the server's GDKP culture has matured to the point where others will surely pick up the baton.

Now look at the response other servers can get, have a quick browse over these threads. They got the opposite reaction to what people have had on other realm forums, heres just two:

1 - World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> GDKP - Gold based system to run pugs
2 - World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> [A] ToC 25 GDKP

Reponses include delights such as, "Please dont bring this to our server", "ml at the end RUNS OFF WITH EVERYONES GOLD AND SAYS LOLOLOL@ALLOFU".

In 1, the poster made the mistake (that I've seen others do) of 1) quoting your entire GDKP post and 2) proposing the idea for discussion, as opposed to the fait accompli of stating a day and time when a GDKP run will happen. Your post is superb, Tyrian, but you surely agree that it was meant to be referred to and selectively quoted from, not dumped en masse to the random masses (as much as I hate the "TL;DR" culture, there is some truth to the notion). As for 2), forum idiots anywhere may be mouth-breathers in real life but have an amazing ability to, like sharks, sense weakness and blood in the water.

In 2, I agree that the poster did a much better job in his initial post. He made two mistakes: a) He still posed GDKP as a theory to be debated, as opposed to "I'm doing this at this day and that time. Sign up here if interested." b) He got into an argument with that other pickup-raid organizer. Raid leader #2 reserves BoEs for himself, we learn; as condemnable as that sort of behavior is, were I the original poster I wouldn't have brought it up when my purpose is discussing GDKP, not why another player's rules deserve criticism.

Then compare things like that with the first post you made regarding GDKP on Llane forums: World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Crusader 25 GDKP run Sun 8 Nov 8pm server . A list immediately full of people eager to be signed up.

I got lucky; I very, very much feared that some moron would latch onto the post and start mocking it, attracting others (sharks and blood, again). It was pure luck that that didn't happen. While that risk still exists, of course, every successful GDKP run further shuts up naysayers.

It's also common to read people respond with things like, "Its a great idea, but wont work on our server".

This brings up the interesting question - why? Who decides or is responsible for whether GDKP would or wouldn't work? How can the realm population attitude vary so much between servers?

Unless a server is extremely at one end of the bell curve, all those claims of "It won't work here" are simply nonsense without empirical testing. As previously mentioned, Llane is in every respect utterly average; nonetheless, I've seen many, many claims in the server forum and in Trade chat that people are leaving the server, or that newcomers shouldn't bother with the server because there aren't any high-end raiding guilds (there are; they just aren't, say, Top 50 worldwide), or that the economy is broken, etc., etc. People extrapolating their personal failures onto the server, more or less.

Blackrock is a big server that has been around since WoW's release. Many guilds and players have been around since day one, including a good number of the best-progressed guilds. There have been a few free transfers off the server, but the last one was 3 years ago. Many good PUG raids are led by players (eg alts) from big, established guilds. Some guilds did 'cash runs' during BWL and ZG, selling bears. Many people who lead GDKP raids are from established, respected guilds. This lets them draw on the backbone from their guilds with ease, which helps facilitate initial success. Said guilds often have players that have been playing WoW a long time, and are already familiar with the idea of cash runs (and variants thereof). Because these guilds are quite old/established, nearly everyone who has been on the server a while will know them by name quite well.

Llane is a medium-to-large launch-day server. While I don't believe any current top raiding guild has been around since day one, the majority has existed since vanilla. I am not aware of any free transfers ever occurring on the server. I--a player on the server since a month after release, but never guilded--am, so far, the only person to lead GDKP runs. Every run from the first has attracted attention from said top guilds, though, which I am certain helped to draw others ("If so-and-so from <Insomniacs> and that guy from <Annihilation> are going, this must be good!"); again, pure luck.