A GDKP raid is one where any raid member can bid (in gold) for drops. And at the end of the raid the total bid is split between all raid members. Tyrian explains how this works and where it came from in a comprehensively detailed post at Elitist Jerks.
Heres the concept in a nutshell:
– GDKP stands for “Gold-DKP”
– It was a Korean concept brought to WoW
– Items which drop in your run are auctioned off in raid chat. The highest bidder receives the item and the gold they pay is added to “The Pot”
– Profession Patterns, BOE’s, Crusader Orbs etc are all auctioned off in this manner as well. Everything that drops.
– The pot keeps growing in value until the end of the run
– The pot is split evenly at the end of the run to all 25 players in the raid present when the final boss dies.
– There is no mainspec > offspec priority, its gold which determines who gets items.
This isn’t something I’ve seen on my server so I’m not sure if the idea has really taken off in Europe yet. But it probably will. If there’s one thing that might make running an old raid instance more palatable, it is getting a nice cash pot at the end of the run.
I do see advantages to the system. Players are encouraged to stay right to the end. Well geared main characters are encouraged to come even if they don’t want any drops. Well heeled alts can get geared up quickly and without much grind. In fact, you could do a couple of runs on a main to earn cash so that you could take your alt on a third run and gear it up there (if you really hate earning gold by any other means than raiding).
Then there are the disadvantages – it encourages gold selling. If you could spend some real cash for in game gold and translate it so easily into items via a GDKP run, why do anything else? How many useless but rich alts can you take along without the whole run becoming a tedious drag?
But the general idea seems so sound that I wonder if hidden somewhere in the GDKP is the future of real money transactions in games. After all, all Blizzard (or any company) needs to do to complete the circle is to sell gold themselves ….
Welcome to Spinksville! 
On completing the circle:-
EvE has this. Okay so you cant actualy buy currency from them but you can buy a resource with Real Cash (game time) and then sell it in game. So likewise you can buy game time with in game funds from other players who have paid for it with cash.
This is a great anti gold seller tool. It may be worth it just for that. However I found it demotivated me. As skills gained are a product of total time played (no skill ups from leveling just where you choose to spend your training time and the will power to makesure you were always training something) and in game currency is available at a pinch from spending Real Life funds the newbie player has a huge mountain to climb. I got my newbie character to the point where he coould fly a ‘really cool ship’ [Hurricane for those playing] but not afford one. I had a choice of grinding for hours out mining with my buddies or just buying the cash. In the end my time was worth more than the hours grinding and….on the edge of Gold Buying for the first time ever…I quit. Sorry to anyone from the Hippies Corp reading this but the price tag on the per monthly play was already steep, time commitment to high and the cost of the ISK just not worth it. If I had no option to buy the ISK(aka gold) then I think I probably would have slowly ground my way there. The frustration of having it there but with a price tag I didnt want to pay made me quit instead. Sorry for the long post but I think its important to realise that putting a number on currency makes you realise how much you value your own time….
I approached Eve the other way around. I plan to spend about a year basically playing solo Monopoly. Then I’ll use my financial empire to finance pvp uberness (and pay for the accounts).
Ooo, I love this idea!
Basically it makes raiding the best paid job in the game. It also means that less popular roles like healing will get filled because you’re paying them.
I also think it would really punish people who only give 20% effort. No one wants to feel they lost a ton of money because someone else is slacking.
As for increasing gold buying don’t people already buy raid slots and raid loot? On just about any server if you want raid loot you can get it for enough gold.
I can see the bidding getting really intense for some items. Imagine the Phoenix Mount from Tempest Keep The Eye dropping in a gold dkp raid.
It makes for a massive entry barrier though. Who would take a blue-geared tank on a gdkp raid? He’s costing you money if he can’t cut it. Basically if you want to tank raids you would either have to be in with the fast levelling crowd at the start of an expansion (when everyone is in blues) or you would have to collect tank gear as a healer or dps. And of course since a great many people want to tank raids tank loot would get VERY expensive. (But a full Best in Slot tank would earn millions, the rock stars of the server).
Not sure about earning millions, you’d still have the same raid locks as everyone else. I think raid leaders do well out of the system though — which is reasonably fair because it sounds a bit of a pain to balance the raid between well geared mains who want the cash and people who want to spend lots of gold and know the game.
I think re: entry barrier, this kind of system is to keep bored level 80s occupied so probably wouldn’t arise until later on in an expansion.
“Basically if you want to tank raids you would either have to be in with the fast levelling crowd at the start of an expansion (when everyone is in blues) or you would have to collect tank gear as a healer or dps.”
I think this is already the case.
Lot of raids about though. You could run stuff like Blackwing Lair and Karazhan and probably see quite a lot of stuff sell once the idea gets popular.
Just had a look at Curse. The gold raid manager addon recommended has 1348 downloads so this must be still pretty tiny.
Yup, I think it’s quite a neat idea which is why I wanted to spread the word a bit.
Its intresting isnt it?
It would certainly motivate the more end game players to go do the older raids. Gearing up? Well with a little effort you can get a semi decent set of gear suitable for Naxx. Go raid Naxx and make no bids for a few weeks and you should get some gold. The difference should be that instead of a limited raid pool of your guild your effectively earning DKP in the form of gold from PuG’s. Where does the gold come from? Alts. There are plenty of DK’s and other alts with rich mains behind them that will be gearing this way.
Gevlon posted about this a while back and there was much discussion. From my POV it has two downsides:- it does encourage gold selling and it could easily break up Guild Runs. Why limit yourself to a Guild progression run when you could be earning lots on GoldDKP runs. And if your guild adopts it….ouch.
Is there and if there is, what’s the minimum amount one has to bid for an item?
Is it the current price for abyss crystals?
As for the idea itself I think it’s pretty nice, as it gives a good incentive for well geeared players to come along, collect some emblems (exchange for epic gems) and gold equal to boring dailis.
It would depend on the Raid Leader. As you say minimum bid at the current going rate for Abyss Crystals makes sense….depending on the raid content level.
However it might also dependon who’s in the raid. Setting minmum bid high might encourage top end raiders. Makes sense that the min bid on naxx level gear is going to be less then on a Heroic Triumph run. If you want the server ‘Rockstars’ your going to have to make it worth their time….
‘Top Guild, Cleared Heroic Col, 5 spots 25 man, Min bid 5k, must bring 20k to the pot, inspections in Dal’ town centre.’ We could expect to hear it soon 😉
I think its pretty neat and could really work given a few downsides already aknowledged.
I’d never heard of this, I love learning new things 😀
Well, my opinion is that IS a really good idea in the way that all the money is spilt evenly at the end, so- that would basically mean you spend gold to get half of it back + epics and motivation to keep raiding.
Maybe I got the maths wrong, but it’ll turn out roughly like that I think- The only problem is the reason I like DKP is because it can’t be used for anything else other than guild related stuff, whilst gold can be used for Griffins and buying raid consumables and such. Would GDKP make people tempted to spend there last gold on a epic- forcing them to do every daily available to make sure they can bid again sometime soon?
I really dislike the idea since it makes gold the pre-determined DKP that everyone has. Someone that’s new to the game and/or don’t do their dailies will have an easier time getting items, despite maybe raiding less.
There are old members of my guild sitting on tens of thousands of gold, while a friend who just joined seems to be reduced to 0 each day from enchanting and gemming new gear.
Is this any different than DKP? New players will have none. The big difference might be that it corrects itself faster: your poor friends would quickly find themselves with a share of the thousands of gold being bid and then be able to join in the bidding.
Another element is that you might see more raids.
There is a point where you really don’t need any raid but the latest. With this however you could heal a Naxx for flask money for your main raid.
I think we’d see a lot of semi-retired well-geared raiders coming out of semi-retirement for this.
Another thing is that most raiders do dailies to get consumables money and think that it’s boring. I know I’d much rather raid for 4 hours a week to get 1-2k gold than grind fire elementals or do those silly joust quests.
I like the idea that you could make money and gain experience at the same time, and then when you’ve made some money you’d be able to bid on gear. I’ve also seen it formulated where people that won items don’t get a share of the pot at the end… so say you’re in ten man naxx and four people bid and win, then the gold is split between the other six. That way you get loot OR money, which seems fair to me. I’m not sure why the bidders should get some of their gold back at the end. Then they’re getting significantly more benefit than people who don’t bid, which is counterintuitive.
A concern is that people won’t want to wipe (who does) and that they’ll really only bring one or two people at a time who are gearing up and thus bidding, and the rest to carry them. Which doesn’t lower the entry requirement at all. New players gearing couldn’t tag along on a run to get the gold to bid with later, because the runs would only take people who were A) already geared or B) already rich. Defeats the purpose, if you ask me.
Spinks, I don’t think GDKP encourages gold selling, I think it *requires* it. The problem is the initial start up gold for the raid as a whole. No one is going to go on a GDKP raid when the amount is being bid on each purple is 10g. That’s awesome for the bidders and sucks for everyone else. There needs to be a pool of gold among the raid members that will compensate the losers for their time in the raid. We can speculate on what that number is but 50K would seem to be bare minimum or 2K gold person. When you look at actual GDPK runs in Korea for cutting edge raids you see total raid amounts above 500K gold, some above 750K
The problem is essential a cultural one. In Korea, no one thinks anything of grinding for a month to be able to afford an off-hand item. Americans will never go for that; not a chance. So the only way to get the gold to make the runs worth while will be to buy it.
Yeah, I think the struggle as a raid leader is to find enough people who are willing to bid high enough to make it worth everyone’s while to go.
So for example, assuming the overgeared guys would like at least 1000g for a Naxx run, that means that in a 25 man run, you need 25k bid in total. Now how much are people really willing to pay for Naxx loot these days is what I wonder? I think you’d need some pretty loose wallets and good auctioneering skills to raise that, plus (as Stabs says below) people who are willing to pay HIGH for the privilege of getting raid gear without joining a fixed raid group.
The thing with the starting gold is true but probably not as much of a barrier as you think if you assume that GDKP runs tend to happen towards the end of an expansion when enough people are bored/have time to farm the gold.
The cultural differences point is a really good one. But he does seem to think it’s been working in the US — I don’t know myself.
The inherent problem with ALL loot systems (unless you have Buddha, Jehova or another such running loot council) is that all systems sort of require a level playing field for them to be fair.
Obviously there never is a level field, so things are always out of wack.
I had thought of a “gold in lieu of” DKP type system, Where you could bid with DKP, OR double the DKP value, but in gold. BUUUT as already brought up; it REALLY encourages gold buying.
The one HUGE advantage of the GDKP system is that it incentivies people to PUG, and it gives a moderately fair method of divvying up the loot.
On reflection I’ve realised why I like this idea so much.
You won’t actually need a guild if this is widespread. You can pug anything except stuff that is bleeding edge on your server.
I really don’t like the WoW guild system, I think it places unreasonable burden on the officers and fails to achieve a sense of community in guild members.
I rather like the idea of going freelance as a raider.
Under this system if I don’t have anything I grind/daytrade for gold until I can get onto a raid, then get my gear, then raid for gold (and the occasional upgrade). I don’t have to worry about stroppy guild masters or drama queens or slackers we’re too polite to boot. I just turn up, do a professional job and if not satisfied freelance for a different outfit next week.
exactly.
my 3 or 4 nights of a week were spent on guild raids
now I raid freely anytime during the week.
gdkp improves the quality of the pug
because it encourages geared people to join
(why would over-geared people join a rolling pug)
and it increases the chance the raid runs being successful
gdkp FAQ
1. min bid is generally 50~500g, depending on which raid you are doing and how raid leader organises.
2. apparently it encourages gold selling, since there will be more gold flowing, not being stored in someone’s bank (real money / gold ratio becomes lower once gdkp gets popular – however, this does not affect the in game currency).
3. there are “all-split” and “non-looter only split” versions. i think non-looter split is kind of stupid since you can just trade within 2 hours.
4. poor fresh 80’s don’t have a chance? they already don’t have any chance even in rolling pug. but gdkp accepts fresh 80 if they have gold. so do some dailies, get naxx/ulduar gears cheap, and you are geared enough for toc
5. wanna be tank/healer? start as a dps and grab tank/healing gear. (or grab all if you are rich)
// Elnia
what you are saying is not true.
there are already enough number of rich people to make this happen
Koreans farming… just do a bit more dailies than Americans?
gdkp creates farming culture but also anti-farming culture.
why would you spend time to farm 500g/hr
where u can get 3000~6000g from just one ToC-25?
the way Koreans get those huge gold is that
you join gdkp with your alts (most likely healer since ultimate gear doesn’t necessarily make you an uber healer – meaning you are not spending much with your healing alts)
and spend hardcore on the runs with your main.
the hardcore “gdkp farmers” have 5+ characters going..
this is around 15k ~ 30k and more per week
“there are already enough number of rich people to make this happen”
And what is your proof of that?
“Why would you spend time to farm 500g/hr
where u can get 3000~6000g from just one ToC-25?”
You’d do neither, you’d buy gold; that’s my point. At some point in time everyone needs money to start because under GDKP you need gear to get gold and gold to get gear. The only way to break into that circle is to either grind or buy the gold. American’s aren’t willing to grind, not on the level required. So that leaves buying as the only alternative.
OK, what you are saying is totally not true.
I’m pretty sure you didn’t follow the link in the post.
http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t77416-gdkp_run_discussion_spread_your_server/
There are clear explanations to all of your “what if”s and “I think”s.
I don’t really go for the concept. Maybe because I used to raid in a gold-scarce game, but at least DKP has nothing to do with your earning power compared to others. Someone who is cash-poor but attends raids faithfully will get shafted, even earning more gold, because others gold will also go up while the pot gets split.
Plus, you really don’t want to be forced to grind in addition to doing raids to bulk up your gold to get that one specific piece.
I think it’s an idea with some merits. My only concern is that a MMO like WoW needs far more money sinks. Gold is meaningless if there aren’t some exclusive big ticket items at the end of the rainbow for the very rich to purchase.
Thinking about it some more I think it’s probably going to work best in a game that is designed for this from the ground up.
It’s a big lack in both EQ and WoW that there isn’t a natural way to distribute loot so players have had to devise their own systems.
As Elnia and Spinks point out WoW is too vulnerable to gold sellers and the mechanisms for catching/preventing are insufficiently evolved.
If some genius comes up with an interesting raid game that is pretty well immune to gold sellers the gdkp would be great and would solve some of the WoW problems of raiders progressing past content that should keep them interested.
For all that it may well evolve in WoW to become popular. If it does then people who really don’t want to grind and aren’t worth a raid spot unless they are willing to splash cash should still be able to progress in the traditional way.
This kind of “bidding” is very common in Aion Korea and Lineage II.
It works, because items are not soul-bound, they can be sold, auctioned – only if you equip them, they get bound to the character.
The problem is that it puts even more emphasis on Kinah/Gold/virtual money. Gold sellers are already rampant in Aion, and this system is water on their mills.
It also would not work in WoW because the system is not really friendly to this kind of distribution.
My guild currently uses Gold-dkp. We started using this system when Wrath came out. We start bids for main spec only. Its a silent bid the master looter. The winning bid is posted in officer chat (to keep the ML honest) and the winner is told to open trade with the ML over vent. If no one needs the item for main spec, the ML opens it up to offspec bids. The minimum bid for all loot is 100 gold. At the end of the raid, the gold is added up, 10% of the total gold is the guild shares (guild buys flasks, pots, food and reduced repairs and enchants for raiders with its shares of gold), then the loot is divided up by 25 (# of raiders). Each raider gets a paycheck in the mail. This has been a great loot system for us. Even the people who do not farm gold (i.e. AH camping, profession CD happy people etc).., can get loot. Our highest paycheck has been over 2k gold for one raid night so even a poor soul can come to one raid and have plenty of gold to get up to par with gear.
Some people posted about Gold sellers, we are not worried about our raiders buying gold. Sure someone could come in with 10k gold that they just bought illegally or legally farmed for (which in our loot notes and guild rules, we clearly specify that we do not condone or allow this behavior in guild. Gold buyers will be kicked for dishonesty and breaking Blizzard’s rules), and buy a few pieces of loot; however, the rest of the raiders will benefit from this as well by receiving all of that person’s gold. With the Gold-DKP system, everyone walks out with something.
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In level 23 now. 7 more to beat a whole lot of friends… 🙂
How long more to go? 😦
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No, everyone is not a winner.
Here’s what happens when gold farmers get out of control:
And if the only requirement to join your raid is to have enough gold….
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