Dragon Kill Points - Origin and Motivation

Origin and Motivation

DKP systems were first designed for Everquest in 1999 by Thott as part of the creation of a guild called "Afterlife" and named for two dragons, Lady Vox and Lord Nagafen. Since then, it has been adapted for use in other similar online games, in World of Warcraft for example an Avatar named Dragonkiller started its popular use and other programmers designed applications so that the system could work in game as an application to track data for achievements made. Unlike pen and paper or more traditional role-playing video games, massively multiplayer online games could present challenges so significant that the number of players required to defeat them would greatly exceed the number of items awarded to the raid following the boss kill—a raid of 25 individuals may only see two or three items 'drop'. The actual number of players required to defeat a specific boss varies from game to game, but the person-hours invested are non-trivial. Raid encounters may involve "10-200 players organized to achieve a common goal over a period of typically around 3-6 continuous hours" and demand teamwork and competence from all raid members.

As the number of players required to defeat a boss grows, so does the problem of distributing the rewards from such efforts. Since these items appear, or "drop", in quantities much smaller than the total number of players in the group required to defeat them, a means of deciding which of the players should receive the items is necessary. At the "endgame", new items rewarded from boss kills represent one of the only means to continue to enhance the combat effectiveness of the character or the social standing of the player. As such, individual players care about receiving a fair shot at dropped items. Guilds facing smaller challenges with fewer players typically begin by allotting items through a simulated roll of the dice (provided by the software serving the game itself), similar to dice rolls used to dictate the outcome of contingent events in pen and paper role-playing games. As the number of players expands, rolls may be weighted by seniority within the guild or adjusted by some other measure so as to ensure that veterans of the guild do not lose out on an item to a new member. Games and dungeons which require larger groups of players may create the incentive for more formal DKP systems. Methods to reward items according to seniority or performance developed out of these modifications, including systems relying on a formal allotment of points per kill.