World of Warcraft Forever is taking the practice of buying gold “very seriously,” and will be “aggressively” laying the law down on anyone who looks to gain an advantage in its newly fashioned MMORPG through any form of third-party transactions. As it aims to ensure the economy of WoW Forever stays as stable and new-player friendly as possible, the developer is clamping down on traditions such as GDKP guilds along with its strict stance on gold buying, warning that infractions could lead to permanent account bans.
Community Manager Randy ‘Kaivax’ Jordan and Senior Game Designer Josh Greenfield discussed the matter on a special livestream celebrating the beta launch of World of Warcraft Forever. The topic begins with a discussion of GDKP, which if you’re not in the WoW loop stands for ‘Gold Dragon Kill Points.’ It essentially refers to the practice of auctioning off the loot drops from a dungeon or raid for in-game gold to the highest bidders, and then sharing the proceeds among the participants.
Greenfield notes that GDKP can get caught up in the conversation with RMT (Real-Money Transactions, or the practice of buying in-game gold with real money, typically through third-party sellers). However, he says the “main reason” it’s not being allowed in WoW Forever is “it has a tendency we’ve noticed in the regions where it has been popular for longer to reach a level of ubiquity that it can overtake the traditional guild structure.”
Simply put, Blizzard wants to protect guilds in the traditional sense, where loot is shared out by players based on need rather than willingness to pay. Greenfield adds that GDKP becoming the common standard is “a really big barrier to entry for new players, or players that just don’t have as many resources.” Newcomers are therefore left struggling, he says, and can often feel like their only option is to buy gold. “That’s something that we’re taking very seriously in WoW Forever.”
Blizzard plans to monitor the Forever economy “very actively,” he continues, noting that the team has access to tools behind the scenes that provide “levers we can pull and knobs we can turn” to adjust the availability of certain drops or consumables if the balance feels wrong. Upping the chance to find certain resources in a given dungeon, he suggests, is a great way to improve the replayability of such activities.
Finally, Greenfield says Blizzard is “going to very aggressively punish gold buyers.” He admits, “Being frank, we’ve probably been too lenient on gold buyers, and it’s been a little bit easy to get around some of our actions. We are taking this very seriously, and as someone who’s got a 22-year-old World of Warcraft account, I can tell you it’s not worth losing it permanently. It’s not worth losing any of your accounts permanently. So I would very strongly recommend that you don’t do it. It’s not worth it, I promise.”
