Forever Q&A · No room for GDKP and a tougher stance on gold buying

Forever will not allow gold-auction GDKP raids, according to Jezartroz's Wowhead report on the September 17 developer Q&A. The report also describes tougher treatment of gold buyers and active economic monitoring. The stated concerns include guild communities, barriers facing new players and the circulation of illicit gold.

A raid spot should start with playing

GDKP is a loot system in which players bid in-game gold for items and the collected pot is distributed among participants. It differs from a normal roll or a guild's internal points system. Gold-based loot distribution and purchasing gold for real money are not identical concepts, even when the two become connected.

For us, the interesting question is the welcome a newcomer receives. If the first question before a group activity concerns spending power, learning a character and meeting people can become secondary. A prohibition alone, however, does not make a group friendly or its loot rules fair.

A tougher stance is not a penalty table

The report is not a basis for inventing a schedule of suspensions or claiming that a specific number of offences always produces a particular punishment. Nor does it establish that bots or gold selling will disappear. An objective, its enforcement and the eventual outcome are different things.

The practical approach is straightforward: do not build your progression around buying gold from outside sellers or evading the rules. Ask a raid leader how loot will be distributed before the first boss, not after a valuable item drops.

This is not a rule change for every version of WoW

This article concerns the reported Forever policy. It should not be applied automatically to Midnight or every Classic version. Our earlier Token and boost article addresses a separate question: paid services offered by the game itself, rather than this Q&A's discussion of GDKP.

The recording and the report are different sources

Blizzard's official page provides the original broadcast. This article's account of developer statements comes from the named Wowhead report, not our own review of the recording. We have therefore left out additional claims circulating in forum summaries and are not presenting this as a newly published written Blizzard rulebook.

For the broader picture, read our large Forever overview.