[H] Chaoren's weekly Karazhan GDKP PUG

[Chaoren]

Chaoren's weeky GDKP Karazhan PUG
I think a GDKP could be successful on this server since gold isn't too inflated and you have a few people who want specific items. GDKP works similar to DKP loot system with the main exception that you bid with gold instead of DKP and then the gold is split evenly at the end of the run. The way it works is your bring a group of well-geared players who don't need loot who can carry a handful of under-geared players who have gold to spend on gear. When an item drops the players bid on it and it goes to the highest bidder. Any item not bid on is disenchanted. At the end of the run all gold is split evenly to all raid members.

This provides incentive for players that are already well-geared and don't need loot from Karazhan any longer, or who only need a small number of items. It also allows players who have gold but don't have a lot of gear (perhaps on an alt) to acquire loot quickly and without the randomness of rolling on gear. It should also be cheaper to acquire gear via this type of raid than by trading gold for coins. For comparison, at the time of this post the exchange rate via trade is about 1,500 gold for an Karazhan level item. Therefore, if you can buy your item for, say, 500 gold you've saved yourself 1,000 gold.

Here is how I propose it will work:

• Carry group will consist of 6 carry players (1-2 tanks, 1-2 healers, 3-4 DPS). I do not want two Buyer tanks since that could severely limit our ability to clear the raid successfully. Same goes for healers. Carry DPS should actually be able to carry the DPS of poorly geared characters.
• Buyer group will consist of approximately 4 players (no more than 1 tank and/or 1 healer). It doesn't matter what spec you are. You want it, you bid on it.
• We will use Discord (I will provide before the raid) and I will explain the fights for any who don't know what to do. You can also watch my tutorial here. You don't have to have a microphone, but you do need to be able to listen to instructions.
• Minimum bid for any item is 300 Gold and bids will increase in increments of 50 gold. Assuming minimum bids on all items from all 11 bosses, this means that at the end of the raid each raid member will get 660 gold. The actual amount will vary depending on which items drop and who wants them, but this will give you an idea of what you might stand to gain.
• Carry players who do not pull their weight will be given a one warning and then will be replaced and will forfeit their share of the gold at the end of the run. I will not bring players to carry who are only doing 800 DPS. Your DPS should be high enough to compensate for players who have much poorer gear than you.
• After winning a bid, the winner will trade the gold to me and then I will loot them the item. I will keep track of these bids just to be safe and will distribute the loot after Prince is dead.
• If a Buyer player only needs loot from one boss and does not wish to stay for the other bosses, they can swap out for another Buyer, but they will forfeit their share of the distributed gold at the end of the run.
• If no one wants an item it will be disenchanted and I will keep the mats. Again, if you want it bid on it.

Roster
If you are interested in joining, feel free to either post here or send me a message via the forums (or try contacting me in-game). Those interested in joining the carry group should post a link to the armory of the character(s) they can carry on. Group composition will largely be dependent on what is viable both in terms of being able to quickly clear the raid as well as having buyers so that as little gear is disenchanted as possible. The list below indicates those who have contacted me expressing interest

Tanks
Aoetank- Prot/Ret Paladin
http://armory.warmane.com/character/...utland/summary
Tandoor - Prot Warrior
http://armory.warmane.com/character/...utland/summary
Dasbooch - Prot/Holy Paladin
http://armory.warmane.com/character/...utland/profile

Healers

DPS
Desu - Warlock DPS
http://armory.warmane.com/character/...utland/summary
Arakx - Fury Warrior DPS
http://armory.warmane.com/character/...utland/summary

Date & Time
Will update when we I know when we can run this. Currently TBD but probably Friday since that seems to be most guild's off-day.

[StylebroDMAX]

I need to know times and date.. Prot war 2.4k gs rdy to get carried x)

[Ostlimpa]

This reminds me of Dracon's GDKP runs on Feenix and I have a hunch it won't be allowed "just like that" here.
While you are right that it allows lesser geared players to access higher gear, it comes with certain problems.
1. Guild raiders who got certain stuff on farming mode will have a high incentive to ditch guild runs and join DKP runs for a share of that loot.
2. If guilds starts to allow GDKP-Gboosting (allowing 1-3 players with extreme amounts of gold into the raid in order to pay a pre-fixed price for 100% drop items like tier tokens) then you will see a massive collusion between shady gold-loaded players and top guilds.
3. The concept will be copied. On Feenix this ended with almost every raid and dungeon at the top level (save for the hardest ones) to be GDKP runs by different players. It was also not uncommon for certain raid leaders to keep a certain % of the gold under the banner that it shall go to X classes/roles who has to use expensive consumables. While it might sound like a noble thing to do, in reality the gold aquired for those few extra % amply cowered those expenses and so the gold went straight into the raid leader's pocket.
4. It will in the long run promote bringing players/groups who are known to carry lots of gold (gold that was often illegally acquired), instead of those players who actually needed the run to get gear, but could not join due to lack of gold.
5. It will create a heavy focus on gold on the server. Loads of exploiters will cheer at this idea because it is far easy to flood out farming-bots than it is to find cracks in the code in order to abuse things (eg negative damage to kill raid bosses in one-hit).

I am not opposed to this concept, but one should be aware of its downsides.

[Chaoren]

For sure, we had some similar issues when my friends and I would host GDKP runs on retail during Wrath. I'll try to answer each of your points.
1. I think this is the intention. I'm not going to do GDKP runs for content that is progression. Karazhan isn't progression, but some of the gear that drops there is BIS until BT/MH is released and all of it is now obtainable via the coin shop. Once BT is released I'll probably try to do TK/SSC GDKP if the Karazhan ones are successful enough, but it will still be the previous tier.
2. Collusion is definitely a problem, but I think less so than you might think because of how the coin shop works. There's already a price ceiling. I think right now if you can trade out 1,500 gold on the shop that's enough to buy about one item in Karazhan (provided you can find someone with coins who want's to buy your gold). So no items are going to be sold for more than that. Maybe if we did Gruul DST might, but otherwise not really an issue. This means that any moderately wealthy player could compete with a extremely wealthy player, and this make collusion much more difficult.
3.1 I hope that it will be copied. My plan will be to use the gold I make to gear up more alts. Right now very geared players simply don't run Karazhan anymore because there's no benefit for them in it. This makes it a problem finding groups. I think it would be great if there were several GDKP runs a week.
3.2 As for the leader keeping gold, that undermines the run which ultimately deters people from joining. I can only speak for myself and my own experiences. As far as I see it, it's incredibly important to be impartial and fair when you lead this kind of run. People are trusting you with their gold, so you can't cheat people. The 'cut' I will take for myself for the trouble of setting up the run will be disenchanting mats, but if the run goes well I won't have any and all items will be bid on.
4. I don't know what your point is here. Of course it promotes bringing players who have gold. Players who are under-geared and lacking funds will still have to do things the old-fashioned way as they do now. There's really no change for them. Grind gear.
5. I think there's already a pretty heavy focus on gold right now. A ton of the BIS items right now are crafted. Professions are expensive to level. Consumables aren't cheap. Warmane works pretty hard at banning botters as a result. If anything it just means that inflation will continue to be a problem - but that's inevitable anyway.

[ViciousCC]

Carry: http://armory.warmane.com/character/...utland/summary

[Ostlimpa]

@Chaoren
1. Yes and while I personally got no problem with it, just beware it can put a lot of guilds (especially new ones) out of business very fast. It is simply more lucrative to gear up in GDKP runs instead of the good old fashioned way.

2. You are correct and yet slightly wrong. The GDKP runs can rapidly change the volatility of the gold price. You can also get spikes in the price as people will try to herd more gold for the GDKP runs in case the gold is not sold on the market.

3. a) It is fully understandable but it is catastrophic for the server itself. You basically shift the idea of raiding and gearing up the classic way to a mindless farm game. Once people realise how easy it is to set up a bot, you will zounds of players doing so and the entire server will go into a gold farming hyper mode.
It also makes it pointless to do any preliminary gearing, your gearing is farming or buying gold legally/illegally. This will not only shatter what few friendship/guild bonds there is, but make it pointless to have any contact with individuals in order to progress. Your gold levels is what matters.

b) Warmane is not exactly known for having the best community among private servers. It is infact quite toxic (that is not to say other private servers got toxic communities/players) and you can expect several GDKP leaders to play this dirty trick. To say that you do a GDKP run and that 85-95% of the gold will be split at the end with the remaining 5-15% devided between heavy consumable users like tanks is classic. And while the 5-15% gold can be split to different players, it is not uncommon for those players to be colluding. Same issue applies to the leader/close friends, they will always get spots (which other players only get if they are lucky). You will also run into the issue of having tons of gold greedy players levling up alts just to be allowed in the run in order to harvest more gold (double account playing is not uncommon either).

4. What I mean is that certain groups known to have gold in the millions that is for the most part acquired illegitimately are always invited.
"Players who are under-geared and lacking funds will still have to do things the old-fashioned way as they do now. There's really no change for them. Grind gear. " And this is exactly the problem. The GDPK runs will eventually knock-out the classic ways of doing the gearing up. They will be left with no other choice than to farm gold and due to the ill nature of gold farming, people who can exploit cheats for gold herding got it made in the shade.

5. There is indeed a heavy focus on gold farming and Warmane is doing a good job mass-banning bots every day. But the truth is, the world is full of them. A few days ago I rode from The Barrens to Stonetalon's Sun Rock Retreat, then down to Desolace to pick up my cooking book before heading down to Feralas to get the cooking recipe from Dire Maul. The trip gave me more than 16 names to post in a GM ticket and this was during the early morning hours. The bots came in all forms. Levling, fishing, mineral/herb farming, NPC campers etc.

I hate to say it, but there are simply more bots than Warmane can handle right now and with GDKP allowed, there will be even more of them. The Warmane staff would probably have to allow players to ban bots themselves to contain the bot-plague which would create even more problems.
Like I said in my previous statement, I am not against this, but the downsides can be dreadful.