The WoW DKP system, and a place to run it

What DKP is

DKP stands for Dragon Kill Points. A guild keeps a balance for every raider. Points come in for taking part: being on time, staying the whole raid, each boss killed, sometimes for sitting on the bench. Points go out when the raider takes an item. Over weeks, the people who come most can afford the most, and loot follows effort instead of luck.

How an item is paid for is where guilds differ:

• Bidding: raiders bid points on the drop, and the highest bid wins and pays. Open bidding is quick; silent bidding stops people pricing each other.
• Fixed price: each item (or each slot) costs a set number of points, and whoever wants it with the most points takes it.
• Zero-sum: what the winner pays is shared out among everyone else in the raid, so the guild's total never grows. It stops inflation, at the cost of more bookkeeping.

Decay keeps a DKP system healthy. Without it, a veteran's hoard grows for months and a new recruit can never catch up. A weekly decay of a few percent takes a little off every balance, so recent attendance counts for more than last year's.

DKP suits guilds with a steady roster who raid together for months: Classic and Classic Era progression, a 40-player WoW Forever raid (WoW Forever DKP has its own page), or a casual Retail team that likes points it can see. Guilds that want fairness without bidding often use EPGP instead; current-tier Mythic guilds mostly use a loot council.

DKP on Meadhall

Meadhall is a web hub for a guild or raid team, with a Discord bot. Its DKP page keeps the points; every member can read them from the site or from Discord. It works on every World of Warcraft line it supports: Retail, Classic (Mists of Pandaria Classic), Classic Era, Hardcore, Season of Discovery, Anniversary and WoW Forever, in the EU and the US.

• Pools: every group has Overall; add more (up to 20) to keep separate points, one per raid tier for example.
• Activities: what earns points, each with its pool and how many (Onyxia kill, 10). An officer awards an activity to everyone who was there in one go, or to everyone confirmed at an event.
• Decay: tick it, set the percent (1 to 50) and the day and time, and once a week every positive balance loses that percent, as one line per pool.
• The ledger: every award, purchase, decay and adjustment is a line everyone in the group can read, with who wrote it and why. A mistake is fixed with a new line, never by editing an old one, so the totals always add up.
• Buying an item: on the loot log, an officer records a drop as Bought with DKP with its price, and the price goes on the ledger as spent. A member can't spend points they don't have.
• Auctions: an officer lists an item and members bid points from one pool, on the site or in Discord. A leading bid's points are held, so nobody bids the same points twice; a bid in the last minutes pushes the close back (anti-snipe); an auction can close on a schedule and be posted in Discord. At the close the winner pays and a loot line is written. Auctions need a paid plan.
• Claims with screenshots: when a group did an activity without an officer there, a member claims it with screenshots, and an officer approves it against the activity's checklist.

Meadhall doesn't share out a winner's points automatically, so zero-sum DKP means an officer awarding the split by hand. Fixed-price and bidding guilds are covered as they are. More in the guide: DKP and claims, loot and auctions.

The DKP Discord bot

Link your Discord server with the bot's /setup, and the points are a slash command away. Every bot command works on every plan, except /auction on Free.

The rest is in the guide's Discord bot page.

Beside your loot addon

In the raid, many guilds already run an addon such as Core Loot Manager, CEPGP or RCLootCouncil. Meadhall doesn't replace it and doesn't read its data: the addon handles the moment the item drops, and Meadhall keeps the record the guild reads outside the game, on the site and in Discord, with sign-ups, attendance and the loot log beside it. The officer who hands out the item records it in Meadhall (in Discord, /loot add).

What it costs

A World of Warcraft group of up to 10 members is free, with DKP, the ledger, the loot log, events and every bot command but /auction. A raid team of up to 30 is £3 a month, and a guild of up to 300 is £5; both add DKP auctions. Members never pay. See pricing.