DKP: What Is It?

Simply put, I would define it as a form of currency for players. When MMO’s first came into being, a loot system needed to be formed. Players realized that it would not be fair to just allow anyone to roll on loot. It would completely suck if a player joined a raid and rolled 100 while you rolled a 1 even though you were there far longer. So some guy came up with a method to assign value to item drops (I think this was back in Everquest). DKP stands for Dragon Kill Points. In Everquest, they didn’t have you kill off Ogres or Shades or Demon Hunters (At least, I don’t think so).

There’s various methods for earning DKP and it is entirely up to your Guild brass to use what they want to use. Each method has it’s own positives and it’s own negatives. There’s different ways to spend it. A lot of players whine and complain about DKP and it’s usage. But the thing about DKP is that it doesn’t determine if you get loot… it determines when you get loot. A lot of people have difficulty wrapping their heads around that concept. They start complaining when some other player gets that coveted 500 spell damage weapon before they do.

Here’s a brief overview of the different ways Guilds can classify their DKP earning scheme:

Time based: DKP earned is relative to the amount of time spent raiding.
Boss kill: You take down X, you earn Y. Simple concept. It’s kind of like working where you get paid once you finish something.

Spending Schemes:

Basic: Your typical bidding system
Zero Sum: It’s a fixed system where the same amount of points being spent for an item get redistributed throughout the entire raid. So if a player spends 25 points to purchase a Bow, the entire raid gets 1 DKP each (25/1). Carnage utilizes this.
Spend All: This goes to the highest bidder. They are required to go all in on their bid. Once they get an item, they have to climb the ladder all over again. This results in a fairly even distribution of loot I would imagine.
Hybrid: This one’s an interesting system. You have a fixed cost on items and you add a random number generator on tp of that to help weigh the statistical chance that the player can receive that item. I daresay it’s a bit complicated to set up.

More analysis tomorrow. I turn 20 so I may not get around to it. It depends primarily on how much alcohol my friends pump into my system.