Blizzard will not permit GDKP raiding in World of Warcraft: Forever and plans to come down hard on players who buy gold, the studio said during a livestream held to mark the game's beta launch, PCGamesN reported. Senior game designer Josh Greenfield and community manager Randy "Kaivax" Jordan discussed the policy on the stream, and Greenfield warned that violations could cost players their accounts permanently.
GDKP, short for Gold Dragon Kill Points, is a looting system in which items that drop in a dungeon or raid are auctioned to the group for in-game gold, with the proceeds then split among the participants. The practice is often discussed alongside real-money transactions, in which players pay third-party sellers for gold, because buying gold is one way to win those auctions.
According to PCGamesN, Greenfield said the chief reason for banning GDKP in Forever is what Blizzard has observed in regions where the system has been popular for longer: it tends to become so widespread that it displaces the traditional guild structure, in which loot is distributed by need rather than by who can pay the most. He described that outcome as a significant barrier for new players and for players with fewer resources, and said those players can end up feeling that buying gold is their only route forward.
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.
Greenfield said Blizzard is "going to very aggressively punish gold buyers" in Forever. He pointed to his own 22-year-old World of Warcraft account as an example of what players stand to lose and urged them not to risk a permanent ban on any of their accounts.
Watching the economy
Beyond enforcement, Greenfield said the team intends to monitor Forever's economy closely. He said developers have internal tools that let them adjust the availability of particular drops and consumables if the balance drifts, and suggested that raising the odds of finding certain resources in a given dungeon is one way to make repeat runs more worthwhile.
PCGamesN reported that the stated goal of the policy is to keep Forever's economy stable and accessible to newcomers. Blizzard did not detail on the stream what specific detection or enforcement measures it will use against gold buyers beyond the threat of permanent bans.
