What Dollars Buy and What Only Gold Buys
Most of our material is written in coin: what a route earns, what a raid night costs, what a mount takes out of the purse. This one looks at the other wallet. Forever has no sanctioned step between the two, so it is worth writing down plainly which side of the line each purchase sits on, and saying where the published material stops.
Two wallets that do not convert
In most live versions of the game the two wallets touch at exactly one point. A Token turns a card payment into coin on the realm, and the same item turns coin back into game time. Forever starts without that step, and the whole argument about what follows from it sits in gold priced without a Token. Strip the conversion out and the two budgets stop talking to each other: one pays for access to the game, the other pays for everything that happens once a character is standing in the world.
The practical reading is dull and useful. A player with a card cannot shorten a saving plan that ends at the riding trainer, because the gold price of riding is quoted in coin and collected in coin. A player with a full bank cannot pay for the account the character lives on. Neither wallet tops the other one up, so a budget written for Forever has to be written twice, and the two halves never borrow from each other.
The one place the two sides meet is through other players rather than through a shelf, which is what a third-party market is. That trade sits outside the client, it is governed by its own rules, and the terms are set out in the stated policy on real money trading rather than by anything inside the auction interface.
What real money reaches
The first item is the uncontested one: an active account. Everything else on this page assumes the subscription or game time is already paid, because nothing in Forever is sold a la carte without it. After that the storefront is the only first-party channel, and what it carries for any given version of the game is a separate list from what it carries overall. The general shape of that list is covered in items sold on the Blizzard shop, which is cosmetics, pets, mounts and a set of account services.
Two things have been pointed at directly and ruled out of the current plan: a Token and a level boost. That is a statement about what is offered now rather than a promise about the whole life of the game, and the forum reading of it is argued over in the Token question for Forever. A boost being off the table also means the shortcut most players picture when they think of paying for progress is simply not on sale, and levelling bought from other players is a gold trade rather than a card one.
What is left on the card side is mostly cosmetic or administrative. It does not add coin to a realm, it does not remove coin from a realm, and for the purposes of the supply and demand we write about elsewhere it is close to inert. That is the main reason we keep the storefront side of Forever on its own and do not mix it into the sinks and faucets discussion.
What only gold reaches
Everything charged by an NPC is coin-only. Class ranks are the steady one, and the full trainer bill to 60 is paid a few silver at a time across the whole levelling run. Riding and the mount are the largest single purchase before raiding. Movement between zones is charged again on every hop through flight master fares between zones, repairs are charged after every bad pull, and reagents are charged by classes that cannot cast without them. None of those vendors accept anything except coin.
The player market is the larger half. Consumables before a raid night, crafted gear, enchants, bags and stacks of raw material all change hands for gold and only for gold, and the weekly shape of that demand is set out in the restock ordered every reset. The shelf has no second currency column. Whatever a seller wants for a stack, they want it in coin, which is why a realm's prices are player prices from end to end.
The third channel is labour. Summons, portals, lockboxes opened, carries and crafting commissions are all sold by players to players, and work other players sell for coin is priced in time rather than in materials. A class with nothing to craft still has something to sell here, and the going rate is set by how many people are willing to stand around and provide it.
What neither wallet buys, and what we cannot confirm
Some things are outside both budgets. Legacy points are earned by the character that plays, counted per character rather than per account, and what Legacy points are spent on is a tree built by hours rather than by purchases. Raid loot is the other obvious case: where a guild runs loot council or DKP, the item is allocated by the rules the roster agreed on, and how raid drops are allocated keeps that gear off the shelf entirely. Neither coin nor card shortens either one.
Here is where our information stops. We have not found a published, Forever-specific list of which storefront items are available on these realms, so the general shop list should not be assumed to apply line for line. We do not know whether character services such as transfers, renames or faction changes are offered on this ruleset, and we are not going to guess. We also have no prices to quote on either side of the line, and we do not publish figures that move.
If any of that is confirmed later, it changes the first section of this page rather than the last one. The split between the two wallets is a design decision that has been stated; the contents of the card side are an open list. Until that list is published, the safe way to plan is to treat every in-world purchase as a coin purchase, which is how the faucets and sinks of Forever already describe it.
Questions
Can real money be turned into gold inside the game?
Not through any first-party feature. There is no Token and no equivalent conversion item in the current plan, so there is no sanctioned step that takes a card payment and produces coin on a realm. Everything bought from an NPC or another player is settled in gold that somebody earned by playing.
Does the storefront affect prices on the auction house?
On what is known so far, not directly. The items described as storefront goods are cosmetic or administrative, and none of them add coin to a realm or remove it. Prices move on how much gold players generate and how much the sinks take back, which is a separate mechanism from anything sold for a card.
Is a level boost available for real money?
It has been pointed at and ruled out of the current plan, along with a Token. Levelling help still exists, but it exists as a service other players sell for gold, which means it is priced by the local market and paid in coin like any other service on the realm.
What is still unknown about the real money side?
The Forever-specific storefront list and whether account services such as transfers, renames or faction changes are offered on these realms. We have not found official text settling either one, so we treat the general shop list as a guide to the category rather than as a confirmed inventory for this ruleset.
Sources
- The official World of Warcraft site, where account options and version-specific information are published — World of Warcraft official site.
- The Blizzard storefront, which lists the goods and services sold for real money — Blizzard Shop.