Raid Loot Rules Without GDKP
Forever bans the one loot system that ran on gold, but a raid still has to decide who takes the drop. The rules that replace it move gear, recipes and BoE pieces through guild channels instead of through a bidding round, and that changes what the auction house ever gets to list.
Loot is still allocated, just not for coin
Removing gold from the loot round does not remove the argument it settled. A raid that kills a boss still has to answer who takes the item, and the systems that survive are the ones that never involved a payment in the first place: a loot council deciding by hand, a points ledger in the DKP family, a reserve list agreed before the pull, or a plain main-spec roll with off-spec behind it. The details of the GDKP rule in Forever only remove one option from that list, not the need for one.
Each system distributes the same drops at a different speed. A council can hand an item to the character who converts it into raid progress fastest, which usually means a main-spec need beats a sidegrade. A points ledger makes attendance the currency, so the regular raider outbids the drop-in without any coin moving. Reserve lists work the other way round and settle the contested items before the raid starts. The comparison between loot systems a guild can run matters here because each one produces a different pile of leftovers.
Those leftovers are the part with a market attached. Tier tokens and class-specific gear stay inside the raid by definition. Bind-on-equip drops, recipe patterns and materials do not, and most systems treat them as a separate category decided after the main-spec passes are done.
Where the BoE drops and recipes end up
In a GDKP run, a bind-on-equip drop turns into coin on the spot and the pot is split at the end. Without that step, the same drop has 3 ordinary destinations: it goes straight onto a raider who can use it, it goes into the guild bank for later, or it is sold by an officer with the proceeds going to the guild rather than to the person who looted it. The accounting behind a guild bank funded by drops is what replaces the pot.
That money does not sit idle, because a raid roster is a standing expense. Repairs, consumables, enchanting materials and the restock before each reset all come out of the same purse, which is why many guilds prefer to bank the item rather than hand it to one player. For anyone pricing their own week, the running total in what a raid night costs is the bill the bank is meant to cover.
Recipes behave differently again. A pattern that drops once and binds to nobody is worth more to a guild as a crafting service than as a single sale, so it tends to land on a nominated crafter instead of on the shelf. The guild then owns the supply line and the crafter works on request.
What the auction house actually sees
The visible result on the shelf is a thinner, slower supply of raid-sourced items. The pieces that do get listed come from pugs with no bank to feed, from guilds clearing duplicates, and from raiders whose system lets them keep what they loot. Everything else is held, which delays the moment a BoE reaches a public listing and keeps the early supply narrower than the kill count suggests. That is one more input into what reaches the auction shelf in the opening weeks.
Demand is not reduced by any of this. A buyer who wants a raid BoE still wants it, and a guild sitting on the item knows the shelf is empty. The usual outcome is that the sale happens later and through fewer hands rather than not at all. The income side of that, from the seller's position, is covered in income from bind-on-equip drops.
Crafted goods shift channel rather than volume. When the pattern is guild property, the order is placed with a person instead of with a listing, and the gold moves as payment for work. That is the same mechanism described in orders placed with a crafter, applied to patterns that only drop inside an instance.
What we have not been able to confirm
We have no published breakdown of which loot systems Forever guilds actually run, and no official statement on what share of raid BoE drops reaches the auction house rather than a guild bank. Everything above is the mechanism, not a measurement. Treat the direction as reasonable and the proportions as unknown until somebody publishes a count.
We also do not know how guilds handle a BoE that nobody in the roster can use and the bank does not need. Selling it, holding it for a future recruit and passing it to an alt are all plausible, and the choice probably varies more between guilds than between loot systems. If you are joining a roster, that policy is worth asking about before the first reset rather than after a drop lands.
Questions
If GDKP is not allowed, how does a pug decide loot?
Most pugs fall back on the simplest rule that needs no history between players: main-spec need rolls first, off-spec after, with a short reserve list for the few items people joined for. Pugs have no bank to fill, so bind-on-equip drops usually stay with whoever wins the roll, which is why pug runs feed the shelf faster than organised guild raids do.
Does a loot council mean the guild takes my BoE drop?
It depends on the guild's written policy rather than on the council itself. Some treat every unbound item as guild property until the roster is geared, others only claim drops nobody can equip that night. The one thing worth doing is reading the policy before you sign up, because the two approaches produce very different personal income over a tier.
Does the absence of GDKP make raid gear cheaper to acquire?
It makes gear unbuyable rather than cheap. Without a bidding round there is no price at which a seat converts into an item, so the cost is paid in attendance, points or standing with the officers instead. Gold still buys the consumables, repairs and enchants around the raid, which is where most of a raider's weekly spend goes.
Where does the gold a guild bank collects actually go?
Typically back into the same raid: repair funds, consumable stock, materials for enchants and the occasional purchase for a recruit who is short a piece. A guild running this way is a buyer on the auction house even while it sells very little, which is part of why holding drops does not remove that guild from the market.
Sources
- Blizzard's official news channel, where the Forever rulesets and policy statements are posted — World of Warcraft news.