WoW Forever DKP vs soft reserve vs loot council: how each runs on raid night

Every WoW Forever guild needs a loot rule before the first boss dies on December 9. Blizzard has ruled out GDKP in North America and Europe, so most guilds there will pick from three systems: soft reserve, DKP or loot council. Our GDKP ban and loot systems guide explains the ban and compares the systems in general.

This guide is the practical follow-up. For each system, it walks through one raid night in GuildManager, step by step, with the settings an officer would choose. The settings are examples, not recommendations from Blizzard, and you can change all of them.

The short version

Many guilds will mix them: soft reserve for the 10, DKP or council for the 20. That works as long as each raid's rule is written down before signups open.

Soft reserve: a Barrow Deeps night

The setup. Your guild runs two Barrow Deeps groups a week, and one of them always has a guest or two. You want something fair, fast and free.

1. Create the activity and attach a reservation list. Choose how many reserves each character gets, from 0 to 10. For this example, two each.
2. Mark one item as hard reserved for your main tank, and exclude anything the guild bank should keep. Show reserves to everyone only after the list locks, so nobody changes their pick to dodge competition.
3. Share the list in Discord with /reservations publish, then chase stragglers with /reservations remind.
4. Lock the list before the pull.

On the night. The GuildManager addon loads the locked list. Item tooltips show soft and hard reserves, and when an item drops, loot chat names the people who reserved it. Reservers roll for it.

Afterwards. The raid report on the activity records who received each reserved item. If your loot master uses Gargul, import and export its soft-reserve format, or use CSV.

One limit to know. Until Blizzard confirms Barrow Deeps and Hyjal Summit loot, GuildManager's reservation lists use the Classic Era raid catalog. Check that your raid's items are there before you open reservations. The soft reserves page is kept up to date.

DKP: a Hyjal Summit night

The setup. Your main roster raids Hyjal Summit twice a week with mostly the same 20 people. You want attendance to count and you want members to decide what matters to them.

1. Turn on the points module and create a DKP metric. Core includes up to 10 reward metrics, so DKP can sit next to another points system.
2. Set attendance rewards on the raid, for example a fixed award per raid attended.
3. Add a decay schedule, for example a percentage each week, so old points do not decide new loot. Each decay run is recorded in the ledger.
4. Turn on loot auctions and choose DKP as the currency.

On the night. When an item drops, an officer starts an auction with /auction start, or creates several at once with /auction bulk, up to 100. Choose open bids, sealed bids or second price. Second price, also called Vickrey, sets the winner's price from the second-highest bid, which takes some of the guesswork out of sealed bidding. Set a starting bid, a minimum step and a duration.

Members bid on the Discord post and see open auctions with /auction list. Points a member has already bid are held, so nobody can spend the same points twice.

Afterwards. /auction handover tracks items still waiting to be traded in game. Mistakes happen: /auction reverse undoes an award with a reason members can see, and relist or reopen puts the item back up. Members check their own balance and history with /rewards list and /rewards history.

The bids are guild points, never in-game gold. See the DKP tracker and loot auctions pages.

Loot council: the same roster, officers decide

The setup. Same Hyjal Summit roster, but your officers would rather put each item where it helps the raid most than let points decide.

1. Turn on wishlists. Raiders rank the drops they want in priority order on the web or with /wishlist add, within the item limit you set. You can require officer approval and block items.
2. Turn on loot council and give your council the Loot Manager role or matching permissions.
3. Publish your criteria before the first raid. For example: main spec before off spec, attendance over the last four weeks, and fewer recent awards first.

On the night. Open a council session for the item. Members show interest on the web or from Discord, and can attach a screenshot as evidence. Officers can add or remove candidates. The council compares candidates' attendance, points, wishlist demand and recent awards side by side.

Each council member has one vote, and candidates cannot vote on their own item. Award the item with an optional note explaining why, close the session without an award, or cancel it with a required reason. Then mark the item as distributed.

Afterwards. Awards and cancellations are recorded in the loot history and the audit log. When a raider asks why they did not get an item, an officer can point to the recorded award and its note instead of relying on memory. See the loot council and wishlists pages.

How to choose

Pick soft reserve when your rosters change from week to week or include guests. It costs officers almost nothing and needs no points history.

Pick DKP when the same people raid every week and you want attendance to pay off in a way members can check for themselves.

Pick loot council when your officers have the time and the trust to explain every decision. Council is the system that most needs a written rule and a visible record.

Whatever you choose, post it before signups open, and run one dungeon with it first so members see how it works.

Related guides

• WoW Forever GDKP ban: loot systems for North America and Europe
• Loot council vs DKP
• WoW Forever raid roster by class
• GuildManager vs CoGM for WoW Forever

Sources

Checked October 26, 2026.

• World of Warcraft: Forever What's Next panel recap. Blizzard. December 9 raid unlock, Barrow Deeps (10) and Hyjal Summit (20).
• Holly Longdale and Clay Stone interview, October 8. 4Gamers. The GDKP ban applies to North America and Europe.
• GuildManager plans and limits are on the pricing page.