Greedy Goblin

Thursday, September 8, 2011

The value of money

I proposed to use gold bid to prevent uncompensated loss of items to raids by leaving of players. Many wrote that it wouldn't work as "gold has no value". This is an interesting point as it is true on first glance. You can't wear gold, drink gold or gem gold. But it is true for real money, you can't eat or drink it, yet we accept money for our work.

Money is an universal measurement of value. Items have value on their own. We could barter with them. It would be cumbersome, so people started to use rare, easy to handle and non-reproducible items as media of exchange, typically rare metals like silver and gold.

They are accepted because everyone has a reason to believe that the next guy will accept them too. This is the tricky point about spreading gold as currency for items. If you get gold from the gold bid pot, you can't expect to be able to use it to get an item next raid, because it's most likely be a /roll or DKP raid.

Surprisingly, despite gold can surely be used for repairs, buying consumables and item enchantments in the AH, so it has some value for sure, most raiders rather accept DKP which as absolutely no value outside of the guild. The answer for this paradox is power: the guild leadership forces the raiders to accept DKP. It's their way or the highway. Of course they get even more powerful by enforcing this: you can raid weeks when they easily take everything by their more DKP, then they can kick you and replace with another new one with no DKP.

The same problem exists in the real world: the governments force you to trade with their currency, despite it's made of thin air and can lose value (versus other currencies) easily.

The personal solution (one that the little guy can do), is constantly burning your useless currency and always migrate to "countries" with more valuable currency. The long-term, ultimate solution would be a universal currency that is accepted everywhere. In Diablo III, this will happen because you can somehow get real world money for your items, which will surely beat any kind of in-game currencies. In WoW, we have to advocate gold. Even if it has little value today, it still has more than DKP, which is completely without value and nothing more than a promise from the guild leadership: "you'll get loot someday".

36 comments:

Eaten by a Grue said...

There is an advantage to DKP over gold, and not just to guild masters. Raiders who have little gold and little desire to make gold might prefer DKP to gold, as there is no way to dilute its value through efforts other than raiding.

Anonymous said...

"Surprisingly, despite gold can surely be used for repairs, buying consumables and item enchantments in the AH, so it has some value for sure, most raiders rather accept DKP which as absolutely no value outside of the guild. "

Funny thing this, my guild offers free reprirs, consumables, gems and enchants. We even gave people gold to buy BoE's at the start of the tier - because the GB is always overflowing with gold from selling extra BoE's, embers, patterns and the guild perks.

The only thing I need gold for is respeccing. Anything else is vanity: buying pets or whatever, not my thing.

I think using gold as a method if loot distribution within the guild is stupid for the simple reason it's counterproductive. You reward whoever does most AH playing, yet time spent on the is useless in terms of progression - why force your guildies to do it if they want loot? simple MS>OS rolls work fine, 25 man guilds may want to use EPGP or DKP, and it's not just officers power tripping either.

Seriously, everyone has enough gold for consumables, once you have more than that the rest is worthless in terms of raiding needs.

Leeho said...

In the real world you can buy almost everything material with money. In WoW you can't buy BoE's, and they have significant value. That's the difference.

Squishalot said...

There are several aspects of money in the real world that make it difficult to use it as an analogy for WoW gold.

1) Scarcity. Money in the real world is scarce. There are few ways to generate money for little effort. The low-effort ways to generate money are often considerably risky, due to the scarcity of money (e.g. share trading, physical good trading, etc.). By contrast, a WoW player can generate considerable sums of gold with little or no effort - transmutes, crafting, portal selling.

2) Generation. In WoW, you can very quickly translate effort into gold. There isn't that same ability in real life. This ties somewhat into point 1, but it is a slightly separate point - the issue is that given sufficient time and effort, you can generate enough gold to do anything. You cannot generate money if your boss (or client) will not pay you to work 24 hours a day.

3) Current 'stocks'. Most people have more gold than they will currently use. Repairs, consumables, enchantments are paid with ongoing cashflow. There is no real requirement to bolster unused gold stocks with more gold.

4) Scarcity of goods (as opposed to money, above). As a previous commenter said, you can purchase almost anything with money. By contrast, you can only purchase BoE goods with money. As such, raiders accumulate DKP for the purposes of making acquisitions that can't be purchased with gold.

It could be argued that DKP is the WoW gold of real life - it's simply used to purchase things that can't be bought using the general currency. Just like you can't buy BoEs with real money (in line with the ToS of WoW), you can't buy BoPs with WoW gold. To accumulate DKP relative to gold makes as much sense as accumulating gold in the first place.

Jana said...

"Seriously, everyone has enough gold for consumables, once you have more than that the rest is worthless in terms of raiding needs."

Although the it is anectotal evidence, it's not that rare to hear Arthosdk in a pug after 2nd wipe on first boss go "/raid can som1 lend me 100g 4 repairz lol?"

The world outside dedicated huge roster raiding guilds is not as bright as you think.

Jumina said...

This depends on the goal you have. In your casual guild I believe its the best way. But in the raiding guild where you want to have stable team the DKP allows evenly distribution of the loot.

The gold has "no value" because we value activity and skill over gold farming. So we pay repairs during raid, flasks and food from the guild bank and the loot is distributed acording to the players activity. And DKP are reset every tier so nobody can claim loot just because he is longer in the guild.

I don't think a guild where officers would abuse DKP the way you describe would last very long.

Anonymous said...

I joined a guild that used some sort of DKP when Ulduar was released. After a month of raiding I managed to get a couple of so-so upgrades from 10 man raids which were organized by officers. In 25 man I managed to get just one upgrade because no one else wanted it. Was I happy? Nope, since I had a lot of gold, performed better than some other people, but still had no chance of getting loot. (The same is true for the guild with which I did 11/12 HM in ICC HC.)

In my opinion a guild that aims for progression should have an automated loot system which takes several things into consideration:

1. MS > OS. I believe that armor proficiency should be taken into consideration as well. (Since I stopped raiding pre-Cataclysm, I'm not sure if that problem still exists. But let me give you an example. Imagine a cloth belt with Sta, Int, Haste, Crit, Sp. All clothies, all healers and elemental shamans wanted it. Sure, some classes liked Spi, but it wasn't something to die for.)
2. "Offline epics". Attendance must be somehow included in the formula. A great example from my own raiding experience is a full 226 geared guy who stopped showing up once he got all the upgrades.
3. Reasonable "upgrade path". Giving a 226 item to someone who has 219 in the same slot over someone who has 213 is not a smart decision for the raid as a whole. If you want to have a balanced team (in terms of ilvl) you have to pass item to someone with the least ilvl for the selected slot. Thanks to fucked up raid system back in WotLK, we had people who had perfect attendance (like me, skipped 2 raids in 2 years), who lost ToGC 25 Anub'arak loot (ilvl 258), but got ICC 10 loot (ilvl 251), so we had to pass ICC 25 loot (ilvl 264) to those who already had better items than we are. In other words, if you were unlucky in the past thanks to /roll and your attendance was high in 10 man raids, you had no chance to get upgrades before people who slacked and managed to show up for Anub'arak kills.
4. Gold bids should be accepted at least for the items that are in great demand. By the time we finally managed to kill Yogg 25 man HC, I've spent around a week of my life in Ulduar. Mimiron's Head went to a person who didn't even want to go to Ulduar. Several people offered gold for the mount (50-100K), but the /roll was used instead. On my server it was the first and the only Yogg 25 HC kill on Horde side. I know that you might say 'That's a vanity item. Who gives a fuck about that?' Unfortunately, same /roll was used to decide who gets the second Val'anyr.

Since I'm not playing anymore, I don't really want to spend a lot of time thinking of what is the best loot system (if there is any), but the one that was in place in my last guild worked great in 10 man. It was a simple MS>OS>just greed and by the time I did my last ICC 10 man HC raid there were no upgrades for me in there.

Kurt said...

@anonymous

"3. Reasonable "upgrade path". Giving a 226 item to someone who has 219 in the same slot over someone who has 213 is not a smart decision for the raid as a whole. "

You make this claim, but your next 8 sentences disprove it.

"In other words, if you were unlucky in the past thanks to /roll and your attendance was high in 10 man raids, you had no chance to get upgrades before people who slacked and managed to show up for Anub'arak kills."

Imagine your boss tells you "Ok, we're short on money this quarter, so we're going to only pay the 3 people in the office who shows up to work the least amount of days, they'll receive the full monthly salary of 8k, the rest of you get nothing."

Do you faithfully show up to work every day, bemoaning the 'slackers' who only show up on payday to collect their 8k? I'm betting you wouldn't, yet that's the analogy to your guild's loot system.

chewy said...

If we assume that a DKP system is used as intended then I fail to see how it can be manipulated by the guild leadership.

EPGP is probably the most commonly used system which uses the ratio between the EP (gained from running raids) and the GP (gained from taking loot) to create a priority.

Guild leaders always choose the same team ? But as soon as they take loot their priority drops as everyone else's would.

Guild leaders constantly swap players to avoid them accumulating EP ? This would only work with an infinite pool of swappable players. Sooner or later you would have to use the same player. It could be used as a slight manipulation but not a practical one and is no different from gold - swapping players to avoid them accumulating gold.

There is no perfect system. Yours works for you, DKP works for others. Some prefer to see their effort rewarded by a nominal currency of DKP others prefer to see their efforts rewarded with an (arguably) more transferable currency.

Squishalot said...

@ Jana: "The world outside dedicated huge roster raiding guilds is not as bright as you think."

The irony, of course, is the point that Gevlon is blasting the huge roster raiding guilds for using DKP, not PuGs (which obviously can't).

@ Anonymous:

You ask for the following:

MS > OS: If you're on progression content, that almost always applies as a first rule.

Attendance: I've never seen a DKP system that didn't allocate points for attendance, bosskill or not.

/roll is a horrible method that's resigned to PuGs. Standard DKP systems give first dibs to people with perfect raid attendance, simply because they have more DKP to spend. It means that you won't carry a gold-farming newbie who outbids the regulars to get the best gear.

Bobbins said...

It is the belief that a currency has value that gives it that value. That is true with real world money and wow gold. If wow gold did not have the belief that it was worth something no one would accept it as a means of exchange.

PS In the real world money is only backed by a promise and little else.

Coralina said...

Squishalot

You went wrong at Point 1. Money in the real world is not scarce. It isn’t linked to or backed by anything.

Governments have been printing money by the bucket load – QE. They are generating money out of thin air and in doing so they reduce the value of the money you already hold. It is merely printed pieces of scrap paper that are backed by nothing. Numbers on a spreadsheet even. The quantity of paper money can be increased at any time and its value slashed.

During the moron years in the 2000’s when everyone was borrowing/spending fake money like there was no tomorrow, I was being prudent and saving for a deposit on a house. The UK government however have wiped 25% off the value of the money in my bank since the financial crisis started in an attempt to save the morons from bankruptcy. They have actually stolen enough money from me with which I could have bought a brand new car. If someone stole a brand new car from me I could report them to the police and they would go to prison. Yet I have absolutely no protection against this theft of the worthless paper money I suffered.

DKP is actually even worse than this scrap paper money I describe above. At least I could have been smart with the paper money and transferred it to Swiss Francs or real world Gold.

A couple of hundred years ago in my country there were Mines in the county of Cornwall that paid their workers with their own form of currency which could only be spent in the shops run by the company that owned the Mine and used to rent houses owned by the company. That is probably the closest comparison you can get to DKP.

It is not transferable and its value is even more dependent on a third party than the scrap paper currencies we use today. The Mining company can determine how much to pay you, they can also determine the prices of goods in their shops relative to their money. If the company goes bust you lose everything and should you want to move to another company the money is non-transferable.

In WoW a random guy sat behind his PC determines the value of your DKP. You can only spend your DKP with him. You cannot take it to another guild. He determines how much DKP you and your rivals get for a kill, he determines the decay rates and he determines the price of items. If he wants he can log on today and dissolve the guild, kick you or just simply tell you he has deleted all your DKP. There would be absolutely nothing you could do about it.

Unlike gold thefts you cannot ask Blizzard to restore it. All the time and effort you put into earning that DKP has been stolen from you. Time/Effort = gold. You may like me have invested the equivalent of 50k gold in time/effort into a guilds raid team and have it stolen from you in the blink of an eye.

DKP is moronic, DKP is worthless. As I said a couple of days ago it is no better than an IOU written in pencil on the back of a fag packet. You are performing work up front in the promise that some random individual will pay you back – but he has absolutely no obligation to do so! Plus you aren't just relying on the guild master; you also rely on the team members who got their gear but can they be bothered to come back next week for your item? Will they honor the agreement and raid when they need nothing themselves? Will they play on a secret hidden alt instead? Will half of them (as happened to me once) jump from your realm rank 3 guild to the realm rank 1 guild? You still have your DKP but won't have a team capable of clearing the final boss on 25 hc from which you need a token etc.

Game gold is a backed currency. Blizzard insures it and will recover it when stolen. If half the raid team migrate I still have their gold. Also as Gevlon proves you can use it as a currency to buy BOP if only all guilds would adopt this method.

Nothing will be perfect in a game that ultimately relies on RNG for drops though - the game constantly asks you to raid for zero reward but Gevlons method is the best insurance I can think of.

chewy said...

Coralina

In WoW a random guy sat behind his PC determines the value of your DKP. You can only spend your DKP with him. You cannot take it to another guild. He determines how much DKP you and your rivals get for a kill, he determines the decay rates and he determines the price of items.

I was with you up to this point but you're not entirely correct here or at least your comment is misleading.

Decay rates are fixed in advance and if the system is being used properly are not changed. Decay ensures that priority doesn't remain high for none contributors.

Boss kills don't dictate the EP gained, they can do, but my experience is that EP is awarded on a time basis reflecting effort not a per boss kill basis.

Item prices are fixed by a formula (at least for EPGP) and apply equally to everyone using the system properly.

However in principle I take your point about the relative, rather than absolute value of money.

Phil said...

@ Gevlon: Gold does not compensate the raid for loss of an item. The item is gone and you cannot use the gold to buy a new one. You can use the gold to bid on the next item, but that item will exist whether the “compensation” gold is there or not.

@Coralina: So much is wrong with your rant I don’t know where to start. But I think your most ridiculous statement is “the game constantly asks you to raid for zero reward” – just no. The point of raiding is to kill the boss, that’s the “reward”. Even Gevlon agrees with me on that.

KhasDylar said...

@Phil
You are right, that gold cannot compensate for the lost item itself, but as you write, this gold is there to bid on the next item.
I ask: who will bid with that gold? Those who were there when the lost item was distributed and got their share of the gold pot and are here now, to bid on the item which dropped now.

Again: they were here then and are here now.
Yes, gold is about trust: you trust your fellow guildmates, that they will be there next time, when something drops. But DKP is the same in that manner, and even worse, 'cause you can use gold in any other GDKP runs, not only during your guilds runs. Simple DKP is not usable anywhere else.

Anonymous said...

Getting somone in guild, letting them raid, then kicking them so they lose their DKP is incredibly stupid and counterproductive in any half serious guild. You want a stable team, and you want your new recruit to fit in (preferably he already has experience with fight, knows his class and role, has the gear for it, and who is not a troublemaker). Why do you want this? In order to achieve progress. Any time you need to kick and replace someone your progress is hampered. If you kick someone who actually performed with the hidden agenda of him losing his DKP the rest of the officers and the guild will question your motives. It wouldn't work for long, and I doubt there is any guild on the planet using such hidden agenda. In other words it is a non-argument.

"In other words, if you were unlucky in the past thanks to /roll and your attendance was high in 10 man raids, you had no chance to get upgrades before people who slacked and managed to show up for Anub'arak kills."

EPGP takes into account progress kills wih a multiplier bonus which stimulates raiders to show up and perform on progress raid (GDKP provides no such mechanism), and EPGP gives value to items from only the most difficult last tier if they're an upgrade (you get points based on your performance; the kill; not the randomness of drops and whatever your raiders need to spend gold on). In other words you'd receive no EP for killing 4.0 normal, but you would for killing 4.0 HC, since it is an upgrade for someone who'd play T12 normal. Similar, during ICC you'd only receive EP for killing TOC25HC because all the other gear was too low ilvl to be of an upgrade (ilvl 251 in 10m, 264 in 25m). Which seems to me its compared to current tier normal. When EPGP provides no EP its generally such an easy raid you can virtually zerg through it.

GDKP has no mechanism to reward players to show up on time, show up at all, or show up again after they progressed last week; EPGP does. GDKP allows a new member to get priority over the stable core members whereas those stable core members are almost always performing better together than the new person. Reasons for that include: not used to fight, not geared well, not attuned to communication, not used to tactics used by guild. Not yet, that is.

"Guild leaders always choose the same team ?"

The times I used EPGP we received 1000 EP for signing up and showing up on time (1 minute too late meant no EP). If you were on standby you'd receive the on time bonus as well as the recurring 15m EP bonus. Even when logged on an alt.

If you sign up and show up on time on GDKP and you're out (decided in Gevlon's guild by /roll) you receive nothing. You also receive nothing for being on standby, for being available to replace someone.

"Guild leaders constantly swap players to avoid them accumulating EP ?"

Better to work with a stable team and provide rotation possibility for when someone is not showing up for whatever reason. So you do need to let those who are on standby gear up and learn the farm content.

Since the raid leaders are leading there is naturally always at least 1 raid leader in the raid and they (raid leaders) will receive slightly more EP than a person who is rotated. However, don't forget that raid leaders can also be rotated.

Anonymous said...

@ Coralina: if you suspect you're going to be kicked (nobody it kicked for no reason unless you play with psychopaths) or the guild will disband then its time to shift ships. You should spend your DKP or whatever currency and then leave. You are right that gold would provide more flexibility (and is therefore an option to consider for casual raiding), but I am right when I argue most hardcore raiding guilds don't disband like you described. This is why guild stability is important to an experienced raider (which you apparently are not). It is completely counterproductive in terms of progression to disband a guild. Face it: you joined 3 times a scrub guild. Yes, you are right, then DKP won't work. The guild will disband in 2 weeks leaving you with no DKP.

"You can only spend your DKP with him. You cannot take it to another guild."

Uh, yeah, the entire point of hardcore raiding is to raid with a stable team who is used to each other's class, role, playstyle and is able to communicate well. Why would any of these guilds want to stimulate members of this team to leave and go to another guild?

"He determines how much DKP you and your rivals get for a kill, he determines the decay rates and he determines the price of items."

You should've looked this up when you joined, Coralina. When you join a guild you should inform yourself about the loot rules. Knowing the loot rules is "DKP" is not enough since "DKP" has variables.

"If he wants he can log on today and dissolve the guild, kick you or just simply tell you he has deleted all your DKP. There would be absolutely nothing you could do about it."

Your boss can also dissolve his whole corporation. Yet he generally won't since it'd be an incredible dumb thing to do in terms of corporate progression.

I really wonder what kind of planet some of the posters, including Gevlon, are stemming from. In their universe apparently guilds are kicking new members so they cannot earn DKP yet the guild cannot progress, and they're disbanding the whole time to make DKP worthless.

"Plus you aren't just relying on the guild master; you also rely on the team members who got their gear but can they be bothered to come back next week for your item?"

Serious raiders don't raid for items; they raid for progression. Loot whores raid for items. Retarded loot whores raid for items, and then refuse to use them next week. A stable raiding guild would indeed come back next week to do farm content to gear up raiders so they can progress on the progression content, or can gear themselves up for next patch. It appears to me you got it all backwards, were a loot whore, and played with people who did not care about progress at all. No wonder such guild disbands. And with that note I stop my reply to you.

Coralina said...

Phil

You are totally wrong.

If what you said was true we would kill the final boss ONCE and never return.

Please do tell us what reward you get for killing a boss on the 8th attempt? Do you find that experience rewarding when the item you need doesn't drop AGAIN.

The game forces us to repeatedly kill bosses that we have killed many times before.

It forces me to "farm" content.

That means for many weeks I am killing the same unchallenging boss again and again and not being rewarded.

Well actually I am being rewarded with a completely worthless IOU from the guild master and my team mates.

As I learned to my cost that can equate to being rewarded with nothing as the IOU is worthless.

Being given a share of the gold from people that were rewarded not only gives me something in return for killing a boss but it also encourages me to return and help others kill that boss should I be lucky and get the one item I need from Rag on our first kill.

Hence the ability to earn gold from doing farm runs with new members. I am sure I heard Gevlon mention those before and I can bet my ass his more experienced raid members wouldn't attend those runs just for the "reward" of killing a boss for the 17th time....

Anonymous said...

The guild I raided with always used the MS>OS followed by /roll. People who won over someone else who it would have been a huge advantage were encouraged but not forced to give up their loot. Sometimes they didn't give up the loot because they had been after it for a long time and we accepted that.

I like it simply because people ended up with the right type of gear and who got the loot was purely RNG. There wasn't I've been wiping here for 5 weeks and the new guy gets it. We accepted the fact that if you did the work for the kill and wanted the loot you had a shot at it.

Anonymous said...

@Kurt:

"Thanks to fucked up raid system back in WotLK, we had people who had perfect attendance (like me, skipped 2 raids in 2 years), who lost ToGC 25 Anub'arak loot (ilvl 258), but got ICC 10 loot (ilvl 251), so we had to pass ICC 25 loot (ilvl 264) to those who already had better items than we are. In other words, if you were unlucky in the past thanks to /roll and your attendance was high in 10 man raids, you had no chance to get upgrades before people who slacked and managed to show up for Anub'arak kills."

That is supposed to be a comment about the situation we had in my guild. Sorry for not making it clear, but my guild didn't follow the "reasonable upgrade path" that I wrote about. Abusing the system to get upgrades was easy.

@Squishalot:

Most of the time in 10 man content we discussed who gets the loot. But for that you need a group of reasonable people. In a 25 man environment (unless you are in a top guild) you need some simple solution for loot distribution, which won't make people think of others as "evil".

DKP is not perfect since if you change the guild and pass the trial you will still have to get enough points to outbid veteran members. There are ways to overcome that, but they exist just because the system is flawed in the first place.

/roll suits PUGs and I never said that it should be used in guild runs.

If we assume that in a 10 man guild you have ~15 raiders, I don't see how one encounters "gold-farming newbie" in a guild run. Someone who is not able to carry the weight is kicked from the raid and replaced.

Apart from bots, there were around three farmers on my realm who spent hours collecting herbs etc. They stopped doing that pretty fast, as g/h ratio was low. I made around 2-10K gold daily at AH, so that probably makes me a farmer too.

I really don't see where "you carry a gold with noob" problem comes from. If it's a boost raid with the only point to sell the loot to other people, than I don't expect them to perform well and have to do more damage/healing. In ToGC 10 we had a "guest" raider every week, who had the same chances to win a mount or 258 cloak from 50 attempts chest as anyone else.

I might be wrong, but most rich players in WoW that I've encountered, were also professional raiders. One of my ex-guildies, a 11/12 HC raider in ICC 25 with the axe, had to go social in Cataclysm and made more than 1 million gold without leaving city once.

Anonymous said...

@ Coralina

Once again you totally do not understand the (hardcore) raider mentality. Have you ever raided hardcore at all?

The reason people kill the final boss again and again is to gear up for the next tier. Since the final boss is difficult this is also where guilds get demotivated, and bored. This is why raiders complained in end of WotLK having nothing to do. Blizz then brought us Ruby Sanctum. Since the greens from Cata were better than Shadowmourne and RS25HC there was no point to play such; instead raiders were beta testing Cataclysm. Or playing an alt.

"That means for many weeks I am killing the same unchallenging boss again and again and not being rewarded."

..but you are being rewarded, in various ways.

* You received the gear you needed. You got your candy. Or, you are on trial. Then you must first perform before you get your candy.
* You are gearing up your fellow guild members. This should feel like a reward to you because you play in a team, and team performance matters. I don't know about you, but I've almost always felt happy when good loot drops for my guild members. It allows them to perform better which is in my guild's advantage. If they have same role as me I welcome the competing factor (if they spend DKP/EPGP on it you win too; since they are less able to compete with you next time). If nobody is being geared up it may be better to skip farm content and do progress. In my opinion the RL has to consult the raiders (or other officers) about this and then decide; yet you don't even appear to take the option into account. Sounds like you had bad leadership in those 3 guilds you were in which used DKP. Which is no surprise since they all 3 went apeshit after a short while, leading you into hating DKP. How about you join a stable guild instead?
* If you were using DKP/EPGP you'd receive points for killing the farm bosses even if the loot is completely useless for you. If you already had the very item or are competing with someone of same role then he'd get it and EPGP ratio would be lowered (loot-wise in your advantage). You'd be able to use your DKP/EPGP later (provided you are in a stable guild). DKP/EPGP allows you to overview your points and shows the points of your fellow raiders with whom you may have to compete for certain loot. You would not be able to know how much gold your fellow raiders have ("closed bidding"?).
* And besides that you always receive VP, even gold. The VP you can use for your off spec, or you can use it to buy the BoE for profit or alt. Don't tell me you never bought Primordial Saronite in WotLK to sell for profit since its the same mechanism as we have the VP wrists now. It is THE method hardcore raiders use to earn gold. That, and sell BoE.

"Hence the ability to earn gold from doing farm runs with new members. I am sure I heard Gevlon mention those before and I can bet my ass his more experienced raid members wouldn't attend those runs just for the "reward" of killing a boss for the 17th time...."

Ehm, but your spot is replaced by one of those new players. Woops, there goes your gold. If he does not show up after he bought the loot you don't get his performance whereas he is not stimulated to come back (as is the case with DKP/EPGP _unless_ and only when your guild does not function; when there is drama). Also, raid-wise and sans a good trinket (rest of BoE are not worth it), gold is useless in every other guild which does not use GDKP. Which boils down to only being useful in Gevlon's which is 10m. There won't be much competing for loot there since it is 10m which means the items won't go for much. Tanks, holy pala, and shaman will also get their gear for joke price since they don't have to compete much. GDKP works far, far better in 25m and that is where I have seen it shine, in PuGs no less. I'll save you the anecdotes.

Phil said...

Using gold bid is basically the same as a /roll. When it’s so easy to make gold, it’s pretty much random how much gold the total strangers around you are going to be prepared to bid for any particular item. Using DKP in your guild rewards you for being loyal to your guild, the idea being that a strong guild is more likely to progress than a PUG. You trade off individual gear advancement for progression, which eventually gets you better gear in the long run because you have killed more bosses.

@Coralina
The way you talk makes it sound like you actually don’t like raiding much at all. You should probably find a hobby that you actually enjoy.

As you point out, no system is perfect, but gold bids are a terrible way to distribute loot from raids, because it’s too easy to make gold outside of raids, which means bidding is distorted and people who just want to raid and not spend hours playing the AH are easily outbid. That’s fine for a random PUG or even an isolated guild where all members are like-minded, but for other guilds where people just want to raid it’s plain silly, and that makes transferring between guilds awkward.

There is no way of making people play after they have got the loot they want. The people boosting in gevlon’s farm raids are doing it because they prefer raiding to spending time on the AH making an equivalent amount of gold. Awarding DKP incentivises in the exact same way, assuming that gevlon’s raiders aren’t just saving up for vanity pets. That’s how it works in my guild and it works just fine, with a progression team and a number of farm / boost raids where progression raiders are not expecting any gear at all, but it helps their chances of getting gear in progression raids.

Michael said...

The only currency that matters in WoW is the respect of your peers. The only progression that matters is social progression.

In the next expansion all the gear you currently have is worthless. All the spreadsheeting you do will need to be redone to min/max at the new level cap. All the gold you have will be devalued by an order of magnitude (in vanilla, 2k gold was a _lot_ of gold). All the dkp will be reset for the new tier. All the boss gimmicks you memorized will no longer matter in the next tier. All the consumables you've stored up will be old and worthless.

The only thing that transfers over is whether the group of people you play with care enough about you to continue playing with you, or if they're going to replace you for someone who might be marginally better. If you have the respect of your guild to hold your raid spot. If people find you pleasant enough to play with that they want to include you in their play.

The best indicator of being a hardcore raider in the next expansion is if you're already respected in a hardcore raiding group. Social progression and respect is all that retains value.

Dafikz said...

@gelvon I am shocked by how many hardcore raiders read your column everyday. These people must be the best raiders ever. ALL of them are in perfect top 25 progression raiding guilds. Of course dkp will never fail them, only the loser guilds that don't do it right.

Do you people notice how elite and stupid you sound? Dkp works for guilds that have the same people raiding day in and day out with no hope of disbanding. How many guilds are still together today from the beginning? In these guilds your only hope is knowing someone so you can join the core group or eventually when someone leaves hoping to get that place. Otherwise your stuck in that bad guild who uses a horrible dkp system because "all the cool kids use it".

Gold bidding is more even than you people think. Yes you have people with a crap load of gold, but a majority of your raiders don't come in with unlimited funds. Even if we all have a metric crap ton of gold then were all even. At least I will be earning gold to later use in any gold bidding guild.

In a perfect world all low content guilds would use gold bid till they become a top guild, but that's not the case. Instead new raiders who are unlucky get stuck in crappy guilds while gearing up and have to use dkp which is attached to violate guild structures. They bounce back and forth untill finally they quit wow or get lucky enough to find the top guild that accepts them into its core where dkp might mean something.

No system is perfect but dkp is horrible for your normal run of the mill guild. I am not wasting my time in a guild just to lose it when it disbands or I get into the next, better guid. If they both have gold bid I just move and fit smoothly into the next guild and immediately start helping them out.

You people forget, your view is based on friendship while a goblins is based on what you can do for me. Friendship based solely on internet relations will eventually ruin your guild. And before I get burned on it, im not saying that friendship is bad, just that it shouldn't be the core reason that runs a guild.

Jon said...

I think it's hilarious when people talk about a reward for playing a PC game. THE REWARD IS THE GAME. The reward is that you are playing a fun computer game and aren't at your job. If you aren't having fun in WoW, and desperately seek a reward for your raiding effort more than the entertainment itself, then you have already lost the game and should probably move on to a new hobby.

Having the free time to enjoy a great game like WoW is the reward. Enjoy it, or do something else with your free time that is more rewarding.

Clockw0rk said...

The discussion here makes me wonder if a hybrid Gold/DKP or Gold/EPGP system could be formed in which the guild basically backs the DKP of its members with gold so if at some point certain members want to "cash out" they can exchange their DKP for goods/gold from the guild bank. Guild would have to be pretty wealthy for it to work though. Also this would still rely on the GM not cheating the system but then again so do most loot systems.

Kurt said...

@Michael "The best indicator of being a hardcore raider in the next expansion is if you're already respected in a hardcore raiding group. Social progression and respect is all that retains value."

Unless your raiding group breaks up, then you're better off with 5x gold cap than with the respect of 25 people who quit the game years ago.

I see a lot of people arguing perfect cases here, where the leaders are philosopher-kings, guilds downing heroic content, and gold deleted for fun every day. 1. You guys are arguing about the outliers as if they are the majority. 2. We've all seen tons of drama involving those "perfect" guilds, with them merging and dropping members often.

The thing here is that some of you argue that gdkp might be better for the majority of less progressed guilds, but for truly elite guilds normal dkp is superior. But, then who decides which guilds use which? The leadership, which is the one segment of the playerbase which can really trust normal dkp? Or the rest, voting with their feet to move to gdkp guilds. It's one or the other. Those advocating for all guilds to use dkp, I'll just assume you're in a leadership role in a mediocre guild, and thus benefiting from it.

Anonymous said...

In economics, there's a distinction between use value, exchange value and utility. WoW gold, real world cash and DKP have limited or no use value but, like all good currencies, they have high exchange value. The problem you've identified with DKP isn't that it lacks value but that it's comparatively illiquid since the only buyer is your guild's loot council. In fact, DKP is a lot like stock in a private company; some employees accept it as compensation for work despite its limitations.

Utility is the happiness you can get from a currency -- or more accurately, the personal satisfaction one gets from the goods and services you can buy with the currency.

Real world cash generally has high utility because of persistent real-world factors like hunger, injury/illness and need for shelter as well as higher-level needs like peer/family/spouse/social regard, security and entertainment.

Gold has some utility in that you can buy BoEs and marginal upgrades like gems or enchants. But the end game gear in WoW is designed around alternate currencies: JP/VP, CP/HP, crafting orbs and raid drops. DKP has high utility in the end game exactly because it can be exchanged for drops that (GDKP runs excepted) can't be bought in the gold-based market. Gold has less utility at higher levels.

Anonymous said...

DKP is a great system for top-50 and realm-first guilds.

Otherwise, I agree with Coralina.

The advantage of gold is it is permanent. It may not be worth much (although in spite of what posters say I bet many don't insist on "their fair share"). But if you change guilds, or take a month off WoW, or you GM & RL leave due to RL/Rift/GW2/TOR then gold still has value; DKP does not.

Wilson said...

@Kurt-
"you're better off with 5x gold cap than with the respect of 25 people who quit the game years ago."

If you think you're going to hit the gold cap from gdkp raiding, then I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.

Yes, you can make gold from it, given enough time. Maybe even more gold per hour than you can doing dailies (although from what I've seen in this blog I have my doubts you can in The PuG, unless you lead your own raids). But it's chickenshit compared to what I (or Gevlon) make playing the AH. Which means at the end of the day, I don't care if my payout from the raid is in gold, DKP, or Happy Fun Rocks. I raid because I enjoy it, not because I'm foolish enough to think it'll make me rich.

Coralina said...

At Anonymous 15:15

Allow me to highlight where you failed to understand the story about the Hungarian guild from Tuesday:

“but you are being rewarded, in various ways.

You received the gear you needed. You got your candy. Or, you are on trial. Then you must first perform before you get your candy.”

If you got your gear you have no obligation to return. I got my candy goodbye! You may “think” you are safe from that selfish behaviour in your guild – so did the guys in the Hungarian guild who dished out the legendary...

Also yes we know you are being promised your candy if you invest time and effort up front. Stop being patronising and don't post such obvious long since established points. This topic is about the reliability of the IOU stating that you will get your candy at a later date.

“You are gearing up your fellow guild members. This should feel like a reward to you because you play in a team, and team performance matters.”

Again go back and read Tuesdays topic. These people are not personal friends unless you are in a social guild – in which case you wouldn't be killing the bosses... Dedicated raiders will put their personal ambition above the team and can and do leave for guilds further up the chain once they have their ticket in terms of the higher ilevel.

The rest of your points are either red herrings or could equally apply to DKP depending on the systems used. Stuff like the VP bracers are irrelevant as I'd get those under DKP or Gold systems. Hell I can get them for farming trolls on my alts. We are discussing the merits of the DKP versus the gold system.

Also with regards to "agreements", it doesn't matter what you all agree on, the only guy with any power is the guy that got the gear first. At that point everyone needs him more than he needs them...

Nothing you say changes the fact that hard currency is always worth more than an IOU.

Naturally most posters claim to be in guilds that are nothing more than a strawman utopia. You will all get screwed over sooner or later regardless of how perfect you claim your guilds to be. It is ok so long as you get lucky with RNG and so long as you don't become the new guy who joins up and has to invest up front for empty promises.

Kurt said...

@Wilson:

"If you think you're going to hit the gold cap from gdkp raiding, then I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you."

I'm already gold-capped, thanks for the offer though. No.

"But it's chickenshit compared to what I (or Gevlon) make playing the AH. Which means at the end of the day, I don't care if my payout from the raid is in gold, DKP, or Happy Fun Rocks. I raid because I enjoy it, not because I'm foolish enough to think it'll make me rich."

Your analysis is an utter failure, and rudely worded to boot. If one's ability to make gold outside of gdkp raiding is above average, then one should favor gdkp as one can buy items relatively cheaply. If one's ability to make gold outside of gdkp raiding is below average, then one should favor gdkp raiding as a gold making strategy. Comparative advantage is simple. If one's gold making outside GDKP raiding is average, then no comparative advantage exists, but gold is still a more useful currency to stockpile than DKP, so one should favor gdkp over dkp unless one foresees a situation in which one goes dkp-negative and then leaves the guild, not caring about the dkp-debt accumulated as it is meaningless.

Anonymous said...

"If you got your gear you have no obligation to return. I got my candy goodbye! You may “think” you are safe from that selfish behaviour in your guild – so did the guys in the Hungarian guild who dished out the legendary..."

Yes, you have no obligation to return but you spend your points (which you worked for in past) and are now reaping the benefits. It'd be utterly dumb to get (very good) gear and then not use it. He is allowed to leave the guild with his gear but he will have to restart from scratch with guild rep and social rep within the new guild. He will also have to prove himself once again; if he fails in his trial period he will be left with NO guild. In other words, he is taking a risk. If he is not showing up for next progress raid and progress bosses are killed he will miss a lot of EP. If he does not show up on next farm raid he will not gain the EP from that (while he just lost many because he bought an item). So it is not his advantage to now show up with his new gear unless he has a new guild he can join.

You've already said this, too. And I also already said (in other topic) if loot council was wise they equally distributed the other loot with the legendary in mind. In other words, the person to be receiving the legendary gained less other loot so that the others who were not receiving the legendary as first were compensated. Either that, or the others were saving virtual DKP/EP (virtual in the sense that the guild uses loot council). So in the end there is nothing lost as long as loot council was unbiased enough (a relative term). Now, that may be a problem (seen it myself) since loot council can be biased but that is a seperate issue and depends on the quality of loot council. You did not lose any DKP from his action, thats for sure.

If you are complaining once again about the lack of receiving loot because as soon as you build up your points the guild disbanded then you were dumb enough to join a guild which was already on its way out. Thats like joining a corporation on the way to bankruptcy. Maybe you have a nose for joining that type of crap, I don't know, but thats why I say: if it isn't broken, don't fix it and don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. In other words, try to stick with your working guild and work it out with them instead of guild hopping, unstable guilds, and drama which seems to be what you are doing.

I already read that topic and every reply to it. I even replied to it.

Anonymous said...

"Stuff like the VP bracers are irrelevant as I'd get those under DKP or Gold systems."

Your complaint was you did not receive any reward from raiding. My reply is a response to that complaint because its plain inaccurate. Don't be so daft. Yes, you can get those VP bracers from dungeons which take 30 minutes each. It takes less time to kill farm bosses in FL in full ilvl 372. Which is inaccurate since most raiders who have this on farm nowadays are full ilvl 372/378 with several ilvl 391.

"Dedicated raiders will put their personal ambition above the team and can and do leave for guilds further up the chain once they have their ticket in terms of the higher ilevel."

Haha, brilliant. You really think this person joined Method because of his ilevel? Ilevel the equiv of gearscore? Seriously? Ilvl does not even take PvP or PvE gear into account.

Let it be clear: in a hardcore raid they won't give a fuck about your item level! They will care about your performance, and time table till you can reach equal performance. Having good gear is a plus (short term less hassle) but not a requirement. Having a lot of experience in the role and class is more of a plus than ilevel. You can fix a player's gear in no time. You cannot fix their skill in no time. Likewise, if the officers of any other raiding guild have brains, they will care less about ilvl and more about player quality when inviting a new member. A good way to get in a raiding guild is by having a reference. Someone who knows your player skills on that particular role/class.

I'm starting to feel inclinded it is this attitude of yours which attracts likewise people. That this is why you keep getting these failure guilds; not the loot system.

"It is ok so long as you get lucky with RNG and so long as you don't become the new guy who joins up and has to invest up front for empty promises."

Yes, when a guild disbands all the propery in GB is owned by the GM, and all virtual points are worthless. Heck, if some cool trinket drops with ML enabled the ML in your guild run can steal that trinket since raid is disbanding. It has nothing to do with "luck" to join such a guild; you simply have to know the guild structure and know a lot about the guild before you decide to join. Knowing the loot system and "OK LOL lets do some raid" for a weeks is NOT knowing the guild. Its joining a guild like a headless chicken. Best way to join, like I said, is knowing someone who is already in the guild. Someone who can tell you how ways work, and if its a good, stable guild. Their track record and history is also a very good indiciation for this. But hey, who am I talking to, keep believing you did not fail in your choice of guilds (THREE times) whilst raiding ICC...

Jumina said...

@Coralina

"Naturally most posters claim to be in guilds that are nothing more than a strawman utopia. You will all get screwed over sooner or later regardless of how perfect you claim your guilds to be."

You sound very bitter. Allow me to explain you that as a raid leader of a guild with currently 1067 world rank I was not all the five years I played WoW in the same guild. I even left one in anger and lost lots of DKP. But it never ment too much for me.

This does not mean I don't want the "bis" gear. Yes I want every new purple sooo much. But I want it so much I am also able to wait for it. I raided in 5 guilds during these five years and the shortest time I was in one was 6 month. I had never problem to start over again because I knew in a few month I will have almost everything I want. Even in TBC times. The only question was: "Is the guild good enough to kill these bosses"

As a good raider you gain respect of your peers but it does not mean you have to be close friends with them. Its like a job in a company. You talk with people, you can even drink with them but still you have you own life.

So if you want to be in a raiding guild which will give you purples see it as a job. You don't change you employer too often because he gives you career and benefits you lose when you quit. But if the employer is bad and does no pay you leave instantly.

If you want to join a good guild see their forums or read the recruitment on the trade channel. Select guild which has a little bit better progress you have and be reasonable. Than write apllication with more than 5 rows and make sure you gear on armory is in proper state.

If they take you aboard make sure they have reasonable loot distribution. That is simple DKP system where you have chance to gain the gear in a time. No loot council, no /roll or such things, always main spec > off spec.

Now stay in the guild a few month (one tier), collect experiences and gear. Than decide whether the guild progress meets you criteria. If not start looking for more progressed guild.

This is how the things works for "top raiders". Sometimes there is drama but the raiders come and go as the time goes in WoW.

Brent said...

Given your mindset Gevlon, I can understand your sentiment.

However, one of the big differences for most people is that they play the game for the enjoyment of the activity.

Gold farming, AH trading, even just farming raid consumables is the 'other' activity that they do to support their ability to play. DKP systems were introduced to fix the disparity in player gold reserves, where the player who only raids but is just as effective as the person who spends all their time in game making money outside of raiding. DKP as a closed, controllable system allows the guild leadership to initiate a fair and even system of loot distribution. The biggest thing that so many people fail at is that DKP is not currency. You can't trade DKP to another player for services rendered. You can't pool your DKP with others. You only have one input method (attendance, boss kill etc) and you have only one output method (buying gear). Introducing a multi-source time intensive, non-raiding specific currency into raiding means that the group gears up not by time and effectiveness in raid, but by comparative time spent outside of the raid. Those who farm to raid are no less deserving, and GDKP and its ilk are responsible in a great part for the massive burst in gold farming since early-Wrath onwards. Giving gear to the person with the most gold is fine for a temporary or loose alliance raid, but in a guild scenario, where the gear is handed out to benefit the guild, Gold is definitely not the best method.

All of you idea of gold as the universal currency is predicated on the fact that you intend to leave the guild, or you expect your raiders to leave once they have what they want. By making this initial assumption, you guarantee that it will come true.