Blizzard has shared its plans to take a much stricter approach to players who purchase gold in World of Warcraft: Forever.
Community Manager Randy Jordan and Senior Game Designer Josh Greenfield discussed the issue during a developer Q&A celebrating the game's beta launch. Greenfield said Blizzard will "very aggressively punish gold buyers." The creators also confirmed that GDKP, the practice of auctioning raid loot to the highest bidder in gold, will be banned in the new addition to the WoW franchise.
Greenfield also shared that the main concern isn't the overlap with real-money trading, but that GDKP can become so dominant it overtakes the traditional guild loot system, creating "a really big barrier to entry for new players, or players that just don't have as many resources."
On gold buying specifically, Greenfield didn't rule out permanent bans:
