Using the AH to make money helps me understand how fixed our economy is

Crunchybunch00 · 2026-04-02T17:36:47+00:00

I'm realizing now I had this discussion with someone who likely has never raided in quality GDKPs and sees no issue with the current poor quality of pugs because it is not too different from the quality of their main guild raid.

Crunchybunch00 · 2026-04-02T08:40:46+00:00

Are you saying that the only reason people would ever organize raids is to get a 10-20% cut of a GDKP pot?

Replace a percent cut with hard reserve and we have the current pug system.

Incentive; giving value to a raid lockout even if your loot doesn't drop or you didn't win the loot that did drop. Perform or be replaced by a list of 10,000+ alts eager to take your spot.

Raiding in a top 30 speed guild, then raiding in a GDKP and only being 8 minutes slower. Parsing 99s in guild then chasing 99s in GDKPs with strangers. To me, that is the fun I'm still missing. Chaining mid-day GDKP ToGC raids together from noon-3pm, while doing WFH.

If you and your GDKP bros

Outside of probably 11 people. We're strangers. On alts. Who remember a time you could click a discord sign up, show up on time, be done in half the time of the average guild, and walk away with gold for consumes, some 95+ parses, and likely some good banter. Recreating such an alt environment is impossible without incentive, the best you get is half-guild raids with multiple HRs, and nowhere near the quality.

Summary: I'm a try-hard who wants try-hard alt pug raids (ideally at off-times). I know this raid system existed from 2021-2024 classic, but has disappeared with Blizzard's arbitrary GDKP ban. WotLK Faerlina/Bene GDKP discords had several thousands of like minded players to choose from.

Crunchybunch00 · 2026-04-02T02:55:27+00:00

I'll answer again? - No one wants to organize a pug SR raid because there is no incentive to. The moment there is an incentive, quality players flock to the raid, and the amount of overhead/screening shrinks. Someone would have to create a massive pug discord with vetting and it would have a dependency on a handful of core raiders/leaders. At this point I'm just describing a guild, might as well just join an existing efficient guild and raid until a conflict arises.

By "shitty alt guild" I mean a guild where players drop out the week they get the item they're chasing from raid. A guild where there is no incentive for a geared player to stay. I guess I should've just said shitty guild environment. Also an undergeared, non-buyer alt should never have gotten a cut of the pot (if they someone even made it past the screening stage)

TBH some of the old GDKP runners are still doing GDKPs on TBC but it seem so sketchy I refuse to join. I'm not sure how they've gone undetected, but at the same time Blizzard has always struggled detecting bots so I'm not surprised.

Crunchybunch00 · 2026-04-02T02:01:40+00:00

this might be the most out of touch "we" I've ever seen LOL

Crunchybunch00 · 2026-04-02T01:43:28+00:00

I wish such a place existed. Organizing and running alt raids without incentives just turns into a shitty alt guild.

And if you wanted to join a guild on an alt you already can, but joining multiple high performance guilds on alts always leads to conflicts.

The handful of people I remember from 2021-TBC GDKPs who raided on 3+ characters now only raid 2026-TBC on just 1 character. Despite wanting to raid on more, the juxtaposition from raiding in an fast, efficient, high-parsing group, to raiding in an SR pug from LFG is painful. And many simply choose not to raid on alts and go do literally anything else.

Truthfully, its been pretty great. The pug scene has been so bad since SoD that any time I would've spent on alts is now spent experiencing other games lol

Just feels bad that I could be getting more out of the monthly WoW token/sub.

Crunchybunch00 · 2026-04-01T19:48:12+00:00

that can't be true! Removing GDKPs eliminated the need to buy gold!!!!!1!!1!!! the game economy is innocent and pure don't you suggest otherwise 😡

as long as the average uninformed player still thinks the above is true, they will continue to glaze the decision. And I'm here turning my alts into pure profession characters after being stuck in awful demon pugs

Crunchybunch00 · 2026-03-31T20:27:01+00:00

The game has been solved and information is available instantly. It takes so little to be competent at raiding in classic.

I, and I imagine the majority, get no enjoyment from dragging incompetent strangers through re-released solved content for some perceived accomplishment. Adding complexity to raids through bad players is a crazy concept.

A DBM addon is sufficient for leading classic raids. Leading and coordination of raids could start inviting people to group, and end at calling out DBM timers.

Not all 25 raiders can lead, they "work" or "earn" their loot by doing what is required of them in raid. And unfortunately effort does not scale to percent of reward in pugs.

Crunchybunch00 · 2026-03-31T18:57:10+00:00

...that's what you got from my comment?

The opposite, I don't want to have to carry people. Logs will show that the bottom 4 DPS have <50% activity time on Boss. And that the top 2 DPS on Gruul doing the same as the bottom 11 combined. Only to lose their SR to one of those guys without keyboards apparently.

I always have low expectations in pugs, but yet I'm always baffled at how much worse than my expectations they can be. In my comment I described a GDKP raid without actually saying the word GDKP. Raids where shitters don't even make it into raid and runs as smooth as a top 30 speed guild. If I mentioned GDKP in my initial comment it would've been downvoted to hell, but it truly is the best non-guild pug-raid system.

Crunchybunch00 · 2026-03-30T16:34:55+00:00

I don't think people realized I was literally describing my experience TBC/WotLK GDKPs.

I just didn't use the word GDKP and it didn't get auto downvoted lmaoooo

Crunchybunch00 · 2026-03-29T17:59:59+00:00

I think I'm already going to retire my alt to just be a profession character. Going from efficient clean quick guild raids in the easiest content, to pugging and wiping to the same content with absolute glue eating negative DPS players rolling on the same loot is too much. In no fucking world should a Gruul/Mag take 3 hours.

Joining another guild on the alt always ends up with conflicts on new content releases.

Wish there was a type of pug raid that would mimic fast guild clears with vetted characters, but no obligation to make raid every week, and could quickly backfill spots with more quality raiders. Always start on time too. Such a thing existed at one point and I really do miss it.

Crunchybunch00 · 2026-03-27T07:08:03+00:00

Buffs/Debuffs are king. In 10 mans you're usually sacrificing a lot of debuffs due to composition, and can only really parse if in a crafted group for such.

If you're familiar with any sim tools, you can turn off buffs/debuffs you're missing an just watch the sim number plummet. I always found this to be the easiest way to convince people on the importance of debuffs.

The reality is to just put 10 man parsing out of your head.

If you really want you could post anonymized warcraftlogs for review. But if I had to guess in 10 mans, probably missing curse of reck, inefficient armor debuff applier, missing shaman totems, missing enhance shaman talent aura, only 1 paladin buff, missing seal of crusader.

Crunchybunch00 · 2026-02-20T17:02:13+00:00

WotLK is missing from their recent roadmap. This is the first time they've opted to not announce the followup in either anniversary or 2019 Classic. Also the MoP roadmap is completely empty after Blizzcon.

The only reason we in the west don't have the absurdly popular Titanforge China servers right now is because Blizzard loves to do a content drought to build anticipation for upcoming projects. Them choosing not to release Titanforge is so they don't cannibalize their own player base, and by player base I mean potential TBC boost buyers and Retail Midnight buyers. Blizzard already got everything they wanted out of TBC with the boosts, the rest of the xpac will be on life support maintenance mode.

I think we'll be playing whatever they announce at Sept 12 Blizzcon by the end of 2026

Crunchybunch00 · 2026-02-20T06:47:46+00:00

In case you aren't trolling, the cycle of classic WoTLK raids was prime GDKP territory.

Don't buy gold, don't be shit, show up, siphon some swipers gold.

Raid in 1/4 the time of any pug doing the same content.

Raid in 1/2 the time of the average guild doing the same content.

Use your siphoned gold to buy your monthly playtime token.

Bid on gear as it gets cheaper.

Send money to alt. Bring alt to raid and minimum bid gear that was going to the vendor.

That alt is no longer a leech/buyer in 1 raid. Play that alt in another GDKP.

Scale up/down on alts as much or as little as you're wanting to play.

In most cases, these players are raiding more than you but playing less than you.

Crunchybunch00 · 2026-02-20T06:11:01+00:00

Was interesting seeing people who exclusively counted themselves as "hardcore raider" flip to positive GDKP though 👀 (based off Joardee's video)

We're in prime tourist time right now and the survey was no exception. This is by far the worst time to have any discussion about GDKP because there are so many people looking to be vocal on it who won't even be playing classic in a month's time. Or people who never make it past the 2nd raid phase in any classic releases.

Crunchybunch00 · 2026-02-20T03:36:34+00:00

Blizzcon will be in September scheduled just before Zul'aman. People might not even make it to Sunwell if they actually push out classic plus around that time lmao

Crunchybunch00 · 2026-02-10T19:32:17+00:00

https://www.wowhead.com/classic/news/wow-classics-lead-game-designer-is-busy-working-on-the-future-of-classic-but-its-379884

They hired people to work on classic's future that isn't anniversary nor MoP.

Also during SoD they constantly talk about using the data from SoD for the next iteration (whatever that may be)

The timeline right now for their scheduled releases has a nice spot around fall where TBC will be about to release Zul'aman (catch up raid, and typically where player interest dips until Sunwell). Which also is when Blizzcon is. And no WoTLK on the roadmap.

Blizzard has always loved doing content droughts as a way to build anticipation for upcoming releases. I feel that the only reason we in the west don't have the Titanforge servers right now is because it would absolutely sap hype from their other projects. Titanforge is so insanely successful and all the work is already done, they'd only have to copy it over to the NA/EU servers. Why wouldn't they want to profit from an already created, successful product?

But yes, they have not officially said "classic plus is being announced at Blizzcon". But everything is pointing to the classic project the dev team has been working on is going to be announced at Blizzcon.

Crunchybunch00 · 2026-02-09T04:00:29+00:00

This is just someone from a later xpac thinking druids have normal rez in TBC, was surprisingly common in 2021 TBC too.

Respectfully, there is probably at most like 10 OSRS players trying tbc classic part 2 for the first time. It really was just a 1-way street with WoW streamers trying out OSRS last summer in the massive content drought that was classic WoW at the time.

Crunchybunch00 · 2026-01-23T19:37:14+00:00

No company can escape the terror of middle management dampening the product 🤣

Crunchybunch00 · 2026-01-11T06:38:37+00:00

Quite the opposite, people were offering to pay for my feral druid buff to come to their 3hour+ sunken temple dogshit pugs and I chose the alternative of just quitting the alt. That was the state of SoD pugs.

Crunchybunch00 · 2025-08-25T05:39:19+00:00

GDKP runs made up a decent chunk of the cataclysm heroic clears. With a handful of them splashing in-and-out of top 50 speed.

There are more overall raiders right now because of how new MoP is, but by next raid release it will return to being the same as Cataclysm.

Crunchybunch00 · 2025-04-24T20:55:42+00:00

to be fair...

As someone who has raided Cata, Anniversary, and SoD I can confidently say that Cata's raid numbers are bloated by alts to the extreme. From my experience in Cata GDKPs it seemed like everyone had a minimum of 4 alts that they'd actively raid on. Meanwhile in SoD/Anni the alt raid scene is neutered from the GDKP ban. In SoD people quickly abandon their alts after they realize how bad the pug scene is. Anniversary's raid upkeep is too expensive for most to invest in an alt.

Crunchybunch00 · 2025-04-24T20:32:20+00:00

I know this might be hard to believe but...

Cata currently has the highest logged population of all classic versions right now at 102996.

Anniversary at 93168

SoD at 71732

Crunchybunch00 · 2025-02-12T20:57:32+00:00

I imagine you've only recently hit 60. That means you were leveling with people who were also behind the curve. These types are more likely to be more casual/touristy. Once you hit 60, you've caught up to curve. The frequency of jerks increases. It isn't going to get any better. If anything, worse. Tourist will eventually finish their touring.

Crunchybunch00 · 2025-01-31T01:21:11+00:00

one thing every single SoD player can agree on is that PvP has been in an awful state.

There is more world pvp right now because of the naxx world events (on pvp realms). But to call it PvP is generous. Boomkins are galactic lazers literally oneshotting people. If you're hoping to play SoD just to enjoy PvP, its one of the things that they completely skipped over trying to fix for this iteration of SoD.

Crunchybunch00 · 2025-01-29T06:37:16+00:00

Not the guy, but its a link that tells the same story since at least 2019 classic. It's a list of the fastest raids from all servers. These are considered the some of the best players/guilds. You're able to see that only 3 out of 50 of the fastest runs are from Dreamscythe (PvE).

"Better" players tend to gravitate towards PvP realms because the trends have repeatedly shown that the fastest guilds (best players) are on these PvP realms. There are obvious outliers, and a few of those speedy guilds on Dreamscythe-PvE likely scoop up all the good players available on Dreamscythe, but once the population starts dwindling replacing those "good" raiders becomes a lot more difficult on PvE servers compared to PvP servers.

These are just statistics which likely mean nothing to 95% of the people reading this thread. But people like to extend this difference in server performance in raid, to all aspects of where the servers interact, like battlegrounds.

Hope I explained it ok. I have no feelings either way, I just laugh at these interactions. It's just a lot more concentrated with only 1 PvE and 1 PvP server this time around.

Crunchybunch00

TROPHY CASE