Moving Gold and Goods Between Your Alts
Your characters cannot hand each other a stack across a trade window, so every coin and every bag of ore that moves across a roster goes through the mailbox, a holder character or whatever account-wide storage ships with the client. This is what each route costs, what it cannot carry, and what is still unconfirmed about the account bank.
Your own characters cannot trade with each other
Two characters on the same account never stand in the same world at the same time, so nothing moves between them through a trade window. Everything crosses through storage instead: the mailbox, a guild bank if the roster has one, or account-wide storage if it exists. None of that is a transfer in the sense the rules use for moving coin to somebody else, and gold moving between accounts is a separate question with its own set of rules behind it.
The distinction is worth keeping clean, because the 2 get discussed together. Sending ore to your own enchanter is bookkeeping: the coin and the goods never leave the account and nobody is paid. Handing the same stack to a stranger is a market event with a buyer, a price and a server-side record, which is the subject of what a trade records. Moving a box between shelves in your own house is not the same act as selling it.
Planning the roster early saves more time than any single trick later. Deciding which character holds the coin, which holds the stock and which does the posting means fewer mailbox runs once the bags start filling, and the economics of an alt roster begins with exactly that choice. It is cheaper to make at level 10 than at 60.
What the mailbox costs and what it refuses
Mail is the default route and it is not free. Each attached item carries a postage fee, and gold can ride along with a letter or be sent on its own. The fee is small per letter and only becomes noticeable when a gathering character posts every half-full bag back to town instead of batching the haul, which is the usual way a small cost turns into a steady one. Attachment slots per letter are limited too, so a long route comes home as several letters rather than one.
Some things will not travel at all. Soulbound gear stays where it was picked up, which is why crafted gear that binds on pickup has to be made on the character that wears it, and the same rule decides whether a recipe is stock or personal equipment in which crafted items can be traded. Unsold auction listings also come back by mail, so a posting character left alone for a few days greets you with a box of returns and deposits paid on a listing already gone.
Delivery timing is the part to check at launch rather than assume. In the Classic line, letters between characters on the same account have arrived without the wait that applies to mail from another player, which is what makes the mailbox usable as working storage. We have not seen that confirmed for Forever specifically, and mail held after a trade is a separate mechanic that can change how long anything sits in the box.
The bank alt is a job, not a free slot
A bank alt is a character parked beside a mailbox and an auction house whose only work is holding stock and posting it. The appeal is plain: the farming character never walks back to town, and the holder never leaves it. The cost is less visible, because an empty character is useless until it has storage, and that bill is covered in bag slots and bank space before the first stack ever arrives.
How many holders a roster needs is the next question. Mail does not cross factions, so a player with characters on both sides is running 2 separate storage systems whether they planned to or not, and extra holders beyond that mostly add walking. a network of bank alts is worth building when several gatherers feed one crafter, and not worth much when a single character does everything.
The hidden cost is time. Every hop between a farming character and a holder is a logout, a loading screen and a walk to the box, repeated across an evening. That is the same arithmetic as travel time priced as cost on a gathering route: nothing about it looks expensive in a single instance, and it is the part of the plan most people never count.
The account bank, and what is still unknown
Build strings in the client refer to an account-wide bank, and that is the whole of what can be stated. Retail has shipped account storage that holds both items and coin, so the shape players expect is a shared tab reachable from any character on the account. Whether Forever has it working on 4 November, whether it carries gold as well as items, and whether it reaches across factions are all open questions.
What we do not know, listed plainly: no confirmed slot count, no confirmed fee, no confirmed list of what may be stored, and no statement tying those strings to a feature that is actually enabled. A string in a build is evidence that code exists, not that it ships switched on. We are not going to put numbers on any of it until something is published, and anybody quoting figures today is quoting a guess.
The practical reading is to plan as if mail and a holder character are the only tools you have. A roster built around a shared tab falls apart if the tab turns out to be faction-locked or item-only; a roster built around mail works either way. For anyone already in a guild there is a third option that exists now, and gold kept in a guild bank comes with its own permissions and its own arguments about who may withdraw.
Questions
Can I trade directly between 2 of my own characters?
No. Only one of your characters is online at a time, so there is no trade window to open. Items and coin cross through the mailbox, a guild bank or account-wide storage if it exists, and each of those has its own fee, delay or permission list attached.
Does mail between my own characters arrive instantly?
In the Classic line, same-account letters have arrived without the wait applied to mail from another player, which is why bank alts are usable at all. We have not seen that behaviour confirmed for Forever, so treat it as the expected case rather than a published one and check it on your own roster at launch.
Is sending gold to my own alt the same as a gold transfer?
Mechanically it is storage: the coin never leaves your account and nobody is paid for it. The rules that govern moving gold are written about trades between accounts, where there is a second party and a price, which is a different act with a different record behind it.
Is a bank alt worth it if I only play one character?
Usually not at the start. A holder pays off when several characters feed stock to one crafter or one seller, because it removes repeated walks to town. With a single character, the bags and the time spent setting it up buy very little that the main character does not already do on its own route.
Sources
- Blizzard support material covering the in-game mail system, attachments and postage — Blizzard Support.
- Datamining and beta coverage we follow for build strings, including references to account-wide storage — Wowhead news.