Blizzard just brought out a new weapon in their fight against gold buying and selling in WoW Forever. Players have been running into the “Temporary Economy Hold”. This affects their ability to use mail, the Auction House, Guild Bank, or trade. This is a middle step between actual account actions like suspensions. It will be used while Blizzard is investigating suspicious activity. By using this they aim to trap the gold changing hands when they detect an account has received some potential RMT gold.
If you’re ever affected by this it will either go away on its own or you will receive a suspension. The hold itself will have no other negative consequences on the account unless its proven to be RMT. The system is also new, so there might be some more false positives than usual at the start.
Hello!
Some players have started to encounter our latest weapon in our efforts against the Real Money Trade (RMT) aka gold buying. If your account is suspected of being involved in RMT, either the selling or receiving of illicit gains, you may find your account subject to a Temporary Economy Hold. You will have restricted use of trade, mail, guild banks and the Auction House while this economic hold is in place.
Our aim with this new system is to aggressively shut down the flow of suspicious gold before it has been transferred or put into circulation into the economy, while providing us the time needed to investigate more thoroughly.
If you are just playing the game normally, it is unlikely you will ever see this restriction applied to your account. If this restriction is applied to your account, it will be either automatically removed when the actions that triggered it have been investigated and found false, or you will receive account actions if found to have been involved in RMT.
This system is new. There may be false positives while things are fine tuned, but merely having a Temporary Economy Hold will leave no permanent strikes against your account unless also later proven to be RMT motivated.
Thank you for joining us! We remain committed to ensure that WoW Forever is not marred by the Real Money Trade, and all of these systems will also be deployed to all versions of World of Warcraft if proven successful.
