Blizzard is going to enforce a new rule in World of Warcraft. Loot for Gold – this will soon be prohibited.
In the Season of Discovery, World of Warcraft is trying out some new features – not only regarding gameplay but also the rules. There is now an adjustment to the terms of use. A popular type of group rule, the “GDKP system” will be banned.
However, it only took a few minutes for the community to find a way to circumvent this new rule.
What are GDKP runs? GDKP runs occur mainly in World of Warcraft Classic, Wrath of the Lich King Classic, and the Season of Discovery. When a group enters a dungeon or raid and agrees on GDKP rules, valuable loot is not simply rolled for, but bid on with gold. All players can bid as much gold as they want on an item, and the character with the highest bid wins.
The gold is then handed over to the loot master, who gives out the item in return. At the end of the evening, the gold collected is distributed among all participants of the raid.
What is the new rule? GDKP runs are banned in the second phase of the Season of Discovery. Blizzard states in the official WoW forum:
With the start of Phase 2 of the Season of Discovery, we will experiment with a rule change: We will no longer support GDKP or “gold bidding” in raids and dungeons of the Season of Discovery. (…)
We define GDKP as any kind of dungeon or raid visit, where items are distributed as rewards for gold. We would like to point out that we have several methods to determine whether GDKP was used – both inside and outside the instances.
Where does this rule apply? This new rule banning GDKP only applies in the Season of Discovery, starting from Phase 2, which begins on February 8. Anyone participating in GDKP runs after this could face account penalties – ranging from temporary suspensions to permanent account closures.
The other WoW versions – Classic Era, Classic Hardcore, Wrath of the Lich King, and Dragonflight are not affected by this.
Why is Blizzard doing this? Blizzard is aware that GDKP runs can be perfectly legal in some cases and can be a very normal way of group finding. However, the developers also point out that GDKP runs lead to bots and gold sellers evolving further, and there is an increasing impression within the community that one must buy gold to remain competitive.
Without gold as the primary method to “buy” loot in dungeons and raids, this pressure should significantly decrease.
However, it is emphasized that this is an experiment to observe the effects of this new rule and possibly revert it or extend it to other WoW versions.
What is the problem? It took only a few minutes for the community to find a significant loophole in these new rules. Since Blizzard has clearly defined GDKP runs as bidding gold, players immediately chose an alternative:
Valuable resources.
Rather than bidding gold on items, it would simply be decided before the raid that certain resources would be bid on – for example health potions, ores, or herbs. Then an item would not cost 3,000 gold, but for example, 120 mithril ores or 50 purple lotuses.
At least in the official forum post announcing this, the community has expressed disappointment.
Not only are some commentators generally in favor of GDKP runs and find it annoying that Blizzard is taking action against it – even the site that is supposedly clearly against GDKP runs is disappointed by the new rule as it is so easily circumvented.
Whether Blizzard will make adjustments here or if in the coming months you can legally bid on items with valuable resources remains to be seen.
What do you think of the idea? Good that Blizzard is trying to take action against GDKP? Or should they just stay out of it?
