WoW Forever: Blizzard to act on gold buyers, not just sellers

On the evening of 28 September, Blizzard community manager Kaivax posted the same statement on Blizzard's American and European forums, within 2 minutes of each other. Blizzard wants to reiterate some key points, he wrote: real money transactions, or RMT, in which in-game gold is bought or sold for real money, are not acceptable in World of Warcraft. Blizzard is taking steps against RMT in the WoW Forever beta, he added, and will keep doing so when Forever goes live and beyond.

The change is in who gets punished. According to the post, Blizzard has always acted against the accounts of RMT sellers as quickly as possible, but it will now increasingly take action against buyers' accounts as well. Kaivax wrote that this means Blizzard will remove the illicit gold from the player who received it, and/or take further action, which can include closing accounts. The post does not say how Blizzard finds buyers, how many accounts have been dealt with so far, or what decides whether a buyer loses only the gold or faces more.

Kaivax also asked all players, once again, to be very careful about accepting gifts from strangers or other one-sided transactions, where one player hands over gold and gets nothing back. If it becomes clear that the player who received the gold knew, or should have known, that it did not come from a legitimate source, that player's account may face action too. Blizzard has not said how it will judge what a player should have known.

Kaivax replied in 2 threads that players had started earlier the same day. The American one, titled Gold buying rules, argued that Blizzard had not kept its promise to stop being lenient on gold buyers. The European one was about a duel tournament on the Forever beta with a prize pool of 50,000 US dollars: its author called the tournament unfair on players with less time, because the Legacy system lets accounts that have been preparing for weeks get far ahead, and asked for rules on it. In both threads, players questioned where large amounts of gold traded to some streamers on the beta after the tournament was announced had come from. Kaivax's reply names no one, does not mention any account or the tournament, and says nothing about the Legacy system.

The statement follows the live Q&A on 17 September, where Blizzard senior game designer Josh Greenfield said Blizzard would very aggressively punish gold buyers in Forever and admitted it had probably been too lenient on them; he did not say then what the penalties would be. Kaivax's post names them: losing the gold, or further action that can go as far as closing the account. The beta runs until 21 October, and WoW Forever launches at 23:00 UK time on 4 November, which is midnight on 5 November in Central Europe.