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.
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".
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.
[5]: 1–3 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.
[7] 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.
Zero-sum DKP systems are designed to ensure the net change in points among the raid is zero for each item dropped, as the name might suggest.
This is purely an accounting measure and allows the guild to reward players for defeating a boss if they are using an automated point tracking system.
Unlike zero-sum, a simple DKP system does not compensate the rest of the raid based in the value of the items received.
Auctions may be conducted in an open ascending fashion or through sealed bids over private messages to guild leaders.
The eventual winner pays the loot master, and after every item has been auctioned off, every participant in the group is rewarded an equal share of gold.
[13] Since the intention of DKP is to allocate scarce resources amongst guild members, they can be understood in the context of virtual capital.
[14] Despite these analogies, DKP remain a kind of "private money system", allowing guilds to mete out these otherwise unachievable items in return for participation and discipline.
[5]: 7–10 Because guilds mete out DKP in return for participation in events, the functional result is that DKP serve less as currency or material capital and more as what Torill Mortensen refers to as a "social stabilizer"; players who attend raids more frequently or play by the rules reap the rewards while more "casual" gamers do not.
As such, a "Cold Snap" represents a signal to other players that the bearer has defeated a particular high-level monster and therefore mastered the skills needed to do so.