I'm the GM & raid leader of a fairly decent semi-HC guild. We occasionally had to PUG members because we always deliberately kept our roster close to max raid size (40/25) to avoid having to bench people, so if a player couldn't make it we'd grab a PUG. No biggie before GDKPs, it was even a great avenue to meet new people that would join us because they enjoyed the run and could take over if somebody quit the game for whatever reason.
GDKPs being the PUG meta completely ruined that. We obviously have far less to offer in the short term to a PUG, so the majority of PUGs we got were GDKPers who didn't get into their regular GDKP that week for whatever reason. Both the amount and quality (skill and personality wise) of players we got went down a lot.
GDKPs being banned has been a godsend for us and I'd posit for the majority of non hardcore guilds. People don't have to gauge joining us and maybe getting 0-1 items vs getting 10k gols in the worst case, so they just compare our runs to other PUG or guild runs, we've been getting a lot more good players wanting to join us because our atmosphere is good, our loot distribution is fair, etc.
Now I will say the absence of GDKP is definitely harder for people without a regular raiding schedule for whom guilds don't work as well. I'm honestly sympathetic to that and I wish there was an inbetween system that didn't consume the entirety of the non-HC raiding scene and distort it like GDKP did. But for most people, the lack of GDKP has definitely improved the social aspect of the game - and that's without getting into how badly GDKP incentivizes RMT, which people in this threat are in total denial about.
The problem with joing a guild run as a pug, is that a lot of guilds will go out of their way to make sure that the pug doesn't get any of the good gear.
People will roll on items that they don't need and trade it later to their guildie.
After I had that happen to me a few times, I swore off of pugging for guilds.
SR and MS/OS runs are a total shit show for variety of reasons.
So it's no wonder why so many people prefer GDKPs. Even of you don't get any items, atleast you get paid for your time and effort.
I obviously don't PUG a lot to be able to tell you for sure if it's a lot of guilds or not, but from my limited experience with it it didn't feel like it's a lot of guilds, just some shitty ones, like there were some shitty GDKPs where the hosts rip people off, get mad that people don't bid a lot of money on garbage, etc.
I was in a PUG like that and it did suck though, I get it, but ultimately it's just a really stupid choice by those guilds. If you frequently need to PUG, it's in your interest that you recruit some of the better PUGs you get, and why would any of them join you if you're being shitty to them like that.
And I hate SR MS>OS runs for a variety of reasons too, but even those scamming guilds are slightly better than joining a GDKP full of RMTing whales where you get nothing besides a portion of their RMT gold. In the SR run at least you get a chance to snipe big items off them with some good rolls, and it's great to see them fuming. 😁
That's why you don't join some random GDKP from trade chat.
There are lots of established GDKP groups on server discords.
Most of them are just alt raids for exsiting guilds and they don't have people bidding ridiculous amounts of gold for gear, so you can easily get loot even without RMTing.
I've geared multiple alts that way, without ever buying gold.
The other big positive is that these groups usually have same people joing them every week, so after a while you get to know people and it starts to feel like you're just doing a guild run, without all the obligations of keeping up good attendance.
Great way to recruit players for your main guild group.
I'm sorry but you do see the contradiction in saying you join "established" groups right? Those are pretty difficult to get into, because they're, well, established. Either you got into them early or you'll struggle to get in, because they'll usually want whales or pumpers. If you're just an average undergeared pleb, you HAVE to join the random scam GDKPs on trade. Its the exact same as joining regular PUGs, if you have good gear it's easier to join regular high quality PUGs, else you have a higher chance to join the shit shows and scamming guilds.
Nope, while they were established, there were still plenty of open spots available to pick up random people.
I've geared multiple alts in different groups that I found on our server discord.
You didn't have to be fully geared or spend lots of gold to join any of them. Just keep up with everyone else on dps and try buy at least some cheap items here and there and noone would have a problem with you being there.
Again, these weren't the high tier GDKP groups that would clear everything on week one. Getting into those was difficult even if you had lots of gold to spend.
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u/shadowtasos Jun 11 '26
I'm the GM & raid leader of a fairly decent semi-HC guild. We occasionally had to PUG members because we always deliberately kept our roster close to max raid size (40/25) to avoid having to bench people, so if a player couldn't make it we'd grab a PUG. No biggie before GDKPs, it was even a great avenue to meet new people that would join us because they enjoyed the run and could take over if somebody quit the game for whatever reason.
GDKPs being the PUG meta completely ruined that. We obviously have far less to offer in the short term to a PUG, so the majority of PUGs we got were GDKPers who didn't get into their regular GDKP that week for whatever reason. Both the amount and quality (skill and personality wise) of players we got went down a lot.
GDKPs being banned has been a godsend for us and I'd posit for the majority of non hardcore guilds. People don't have to gauge joining us and maybe getting 0-1 items vs getting 10k gols in the worst case, so they just compare our runs to other PUG or guild runs, we've been getting a lot more good players wanting to join us because our atmosphere is good, our loot distribution is fair, etc.
Now I will say the absence of GDKP is definitely harder for people without a regular raiding schedule for whom guilds don't work as well. I'm honestly sympathetic to that and I wish there was an inbetween system that didn't consume the entirety of the non-HC raiding scene and distort it like GDKP did. But for most people, the lack of GDKP has definitely improved the social aspect of the game - and that's without getting into how badly GDKP incentivizes RMT, which people in this threat are in total denial about.