I sold gold in a video game and bought a house. AMA
Played wow classic from 2020-2025 and wanted to share my story. Doing this on my lunch break so if for some reason it takes traction I’ll be back to check! Honestly it’s very interesting but I might not portray it well.
I sold an insane amount of gold in classic. I want to give people an insight on this from someone leaving on the east coast, in America, and not in another country where the dollar stretches.
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Proof of the insane amount of gold from blizzards “recap”
Highlights :
Bought our first home on the east coast and paid for almost half of it ($250,000 house)
Paid off all our debts, vacations, cars, savings for our newborns, wedding entirely etc
Started a family and did this as a second job and funded everything. It was a part time job making better money than a doctor if they had their salary broken down hourly.
Almost ruined my marriage, ruined the game for me, and am so thankful forever had banned gdkp
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I’m doing this on my 15 minute break so hopefully it’s not just a giant ramble and I can go in more detail if people want to know more. It’s actually insane and an underground ring almost like drugs lmfao.
I started hosting GDKPs towards the end of AQ40 in classic (so like August of 2020?) I shortly after transferred to the largest alliance server (benediction) and started there. It started as a public GDKP hosting, but once TBC was released, I joined the main GDKP discord hub for the server and realized you could become a host. That’s when it blew up.
I went to my first karazhan gdkp on Christmas Day of that year, and as someone just attending to help made 2k gold. Some dude named broxy was just dropping gold on his alt warrior like it was nothing and laughing. (Later became a great friend) At the time that felt insane. Realizing the host also made 10% off the top made me think “I can host through here and make a fortune”
Me and my best friend at the time in game were in the same guild and became cohosts together. We really dug in around SSC/TK and from that point forward (through firelands in cata) had one of, if not the best, GDKP on that server and possibly all of classic. I was taking 15-20% host cuts and splitting that with my friend on top of an average raider cut. I had gold cap insanely fast, was hosting 5 raids a week which acquainted to about 8-10 hours, and all my toons had bis gear. Then someone asked if I sold gold and a light bulb pretty much turned on.
Fast forward again to the start of black temple and I sold our first warglaive set in a presale for 350,000 gold. Which is an unprecedented amount of gold in tbc classic. The buyer then bought the entire balance from me in bulk for $3500 on top of me making 10% plus cuts on that back in gold.
This continued consistently non stop through sunwell, the death knight pre-expansion gear alts frenzy, 1 hour runs tons of gold non stop everything.
To put this into perspective on how much money I was making MY WIFE TOLD ME TO HOST RAIDS FROM THE HOSPITAL AFTER LABOR because the money was too good for the time spent. I made $75,000 in tbc alone. (Yes I set money aside for taxes and it was a nightmare with my tax guy to figure out how to claim this all as income)
Now we’re in wrath. First raid of 25 Nax we hit a 700k gold. That’s 70k (140 split two ways) in just a host cut plus a raider cut on top of it. Gold was roughly $8 per 1000 at the time. The raid took 2 hours with probably 5-10 hours of prep time etc. after that it’s self sustaining because people who carry want to come get paid, and the whales know where the best run is.
Ulduar and valanyr another “I’ll pay you for whatever the bid is” moment. Million gold pots, server first “pug” algalon and 0 lights. Mount sales, shadowmournes in icc, deathbringers will for PvP player sub ins, TOGC 30 minute runs aquatinting to $150-200 in gold. When icc prepatch hit on a Thursday, the Tuesday before we did 12 runs back to back on alts and others accounts because it was so much gold.
At this point me and a few guys pretty much “ran” the gdkp discord. If you played on benediction alliance you knew the discord and probably knew us. I felt like a “cool kid” and didn’t realize outside my circle how toxic we were.
I bought a fucking house by firelands in cata. Of selling a virtual currency. Now IMAGINE THIS IN ANOTHER COUNTRY. how far would this money have carried in Brazil?? Eventually Gold was tanking in price, it wasn’t worth it anymore for time spent away from my family. I had 2 kids, married my wife, worked full time in construction, and could juggle wow easily for a long time. It was the most insane second “job” I’ve ever had.
It also made the game 0 fun after a while. Something I loved because mundane. My wife felt neglected and always used the excuse of “making money” to get more time to play. I treated people like shit, I became a complete asshole, and almost ruined my marriage to a perfect woman.
It was insane. It was a ton of money. It ended horribly and I am so fucking glad gdkp is banned in forever to make that temptation for me not there.
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Edit: originally posted in a Warcraft discussion on another subreddit and realized some of this might make no sense to someone not acclimated to the game! I’m sorry.
What is GDKP:
DKP was a term introduced in vanilla wow for “dragon kill points” I believe. Was a way to earn “points” for raiding to reward people for showing up and playing well. You’d get points, and spend them on items
They then turned this into G(old)DKP and the points became gold as the currency. This took over the rerelease for a large portion of classic wow because of people wanting to get what they want when they want it.
Essentially you don’t have to /roll and lose items to a player who you feel doesn’t deserve it and can “pay to win” to get the gear you want
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Acronyms people asked about
SSC and TK are raids in the game. Serpentshrine caverns and tempest keep
TBC is an expansion ( the burning crusade)
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A lot of this had me becoming a “salesman”. I sold a lot of drugs in my life before I got sober 9 years ago from heroin, and gold very much so is like a drug to people who play wow. The rush you get from bidding, winning, and equipping the gear you get becomes habitual in a sense.
I would message the “whales” often just asking how they are, and reminding them I’m not just “selling them gold” and am their friend. Even though a lot of the time I was just to keep me in their mind and make sure it was my gold they bought and not off a website
That being said, if anyone here’s from bene knows who I am or speculates, I did become great friends with a lot of you. You guys congratulated me on my kids, we laughed, you saw me at shit times and you are amazing individuals.
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I no longer have my original account. Sold it for a large sum of money when I quit since I have realm first titles, unobtainable mounts etc.
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Gold earned 100th percentile