 Within the guild, DKP may stand in for competence — high level items (Krista-Lee Malone mentions a specific item from World of Warcraft, the "Cold Snap" wand) are forms of cultural capital themselves. Since the items are "bound" to the player who first receives them, the only way to wield a desired item is to be involved in the raid that defeated the boss which rewards it. 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. The points themselves represent a mélange of cultural and material capital. The language of material capital is used: "price", "bid", and "currency", but these terms belie a unit of account that "crosses the line between material and symbolic".
