Blizzard wants to enforce a new rule in World of Warcraft. Loot for gold – that will soon be forbidden.
In the Season of Discovery, World of Warcraft is trying some innovations – not only in terms of gameplay, but also in the rules. There is now an adjustment to the terms of use. A popular type of group rules, the “GDKP system” is banned.
But it only took a few minutes for the community to find a way to override this new rule.
What are GDKP runs? GDKP runs occur primarily in World of Warcraft Classic, Wrath of the Lich King Classic, and Season of Discovery. When a group enters a dungeon or raid and agrees on GDKP rules, valuable loot is not simply rolled, but rather bidded for 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 looter master, who gives out the item in return. At the end of the evening, the gold collected is distributed among all participants in the raid.
What’s the new rule? GDKP runs are prohibited during the second phase of the Season of Discovery. Blizzard says about this in the official WoW forum:
With the start of Phase 2 of the Season of Discovery, we will be experimenting with a rule change: We will no longer support GDKP or “Gold Bidding” in Season of Discovery raids and dungeons. (…)
We define GDKP as any type of dungeon or raid visit that gives items as rewards in exchange for gold. Please note that we have several methods to find out whether GDKP has been used – both in and outside of the instances.
Where does this rule apply? This new GDKP ban rule will initially only apply in the Season of Discovery, starting with Phase 2, which begins on February 8th. Anyone who continues to take part in GDKP runs after that can incur an account penalty – this ranges from temporary bans 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 in some cases GDKP runs are completely legal and can also be a completely normal way of finding groups. However, the developers also point out that GDKP runs ensure that bots and gold sellers continue to develop and that the community increasingly has the impression that you have to buy gold in order to be able to keep up.
Without gold as the primary method of “buying” loot in dungeons and raids, this pressure should decrease significantly.
However, it is emphasized that this is an experiment to observe the effects of this new rule and then possibly delete it again or extend it to other WoW versions.
What is the problem? It only took a few minutes for the community to already find a major loophole in these new rules. Because Blizzard clearly defines the GDKP runs by offering gold, the players immediately chose an alternative:
Valuable resources.
Instead of bidding gold on items, you would simply specify before the raid that you will bid on certain resources – for example healing potions, ores or herbs. Then an item doesn’t cost 3,000 gold pieces, but rather, for example, 120 Mythril Ores or 50 Purple Lotus.
At least in the official forum entry for the announcement, the community is disappointed.
Not only are some commentators generally in favor of GDKP runs and find it annoying that Blizzard is taking action against them – the side that is actually clearly against GDKP runs is also disappointed with the new rule because it is so easy to circumvent.
It remains to be seen whether Blizzard will improve this again or whether you will be able to legally bid on items with valuable resources in the coming months.
What do you think about the idea? Is it good that Blizzard is trying to take action against GDKP? Or should they just leave it alone?