Trade, Mail and Guild Bank Under a Hold
Forever can restrict the ways an account moves value without touching the way it plays. Trade, mail, the guild bank and the auction house are 4 separate channels, and a hold can sit on all of them at once. This is what that looks like from the inside, and what we cannot confirm.
The 4 channels a hold closes
Moving value in Forever runs through 4 doors and nothing else: the direct trade window, mail with attachments, the guild bank, and the auction house. A temporary economy hold is a restriction placed on those doors rather than on the character standing in front of them. Nothing is removed from the account, nothing is taken out of the bags, and the login itself is unaffected. What changes is that coin and goods stop leaving the account, and in most descriptions of the mechanism they stop arriving as well.
Those 4 doors are not equivalent, which is why a hold feels different depending on how you play. A solo gatherer notices the auction house first. A guild supplier notices the shared vault, and a guild's shared bank fund is usually where that player's stock lives rather than in personal slots. A crafter notices mail, because the delivery half of a sale happens there. The restriction is one object; the inconvenience is sorted by habit.
It helps to separate the hold from the policy that produces it. The rules about buying and selling coin for money are set out in Blizzard's stance on real-money trading; the hold is the operational side of that stance, a switch on the transfer machinery while something is looked at. The 2 things get discussed as one and they are not.
What still works while a hold is on
Almost all of the game does. Questing, dungeons, gathering nodes, skilling up a trade, repairing, training ranks, the personal bank, flight paths and vendor counters are on the character side of the line, not the transfer side. Coin earned from a quest reward or a drop sold at a counter still lands in your bags. So does everything a profession makes for its own use. The practical shape of a hold is a character that keeps earning and cannot pass anything on.
That turns a normal account into something close to playing without the auction house for the duration, and the arithmetic changes with it. A gatherer who was selling stacks is suddenly pricing against what an NPC pays per item, which is the floor rather than the market. A crafter stops taking orders and makes for the character in front of them. Neither is ruinous for an evening; both are poor value compared with a working listing.
The one thing that does not keep working is any plan built on a second character. Bank alts, material shuttles and a main funding a freshly rolled gatherer all depend on mail or trade. Those arrangements are described in how coin moves between characters, and a hold removes every one of them at the same time, including the ones inside your own account.
What it does to the people around you
A hold is personal, and its effects are not. A supplier who feeds a guild's crafting line stops feeding it, and the guild does not learn why. A buyer waiting on a mailed delivery sees nothing arrive and reads it as a bad deal. Anyone who split a large purchase into a payment now and goods later is left holding half a transaction. None of that is visible from the outside, which is the part worth planning around before it happens rather than after.
The auction house softens some of this and sharpens the rest. It is the only channel where both sides are anonymous, so a seller going quiet there costs nobody a relationship, and how listings and bids are settled keeps running for everybody else. Direct arrangements are the fragile ones. A commission placed directly with a crafter carries a name attached to it, and an unexplained silence on a name is worse for a reputation than a cancelled listing.
The economy-wide effect is small and real. Every account under a hold is supply that was collected and never reached the listings, and demand that was funded and never spent. It is the same shape as a route that nobody farmed this week, which is the mechanism we describe in a freeze on gold movement.
What we have not confirmed
Several things that people ask about first are not published, and we are not going to fill them in. We do not know how long a hold runs, whether the length is fixed or decided case by case, or whether it ends on its own. We do not know whether a notice is shown in the client, sent by email, or both. We do not know whether a hold covers every character on an account or only the one it was raised against.
We also cannot say what happens to transactions already in flight: mail sent a minute earlier, an auction with a live bid on it, a guild bank deposit queued behind a server tick. Those are the details that decide whether a hold is an inconvenience or a loss, and guessing at them would be worse than leaving the gap visible. If a clear statement appears, it goes into this section with its source named.
What is safe to act on is the structure: 4 channels, one switch, and a character that keeps playing while they are closed. Anything beyond that is an assumption, and on the beta assumptions about enforcement have had a short shelf life.
Questions
Does a hold stop me from playing?
No. The restriction sits on the ways an account moves value - trade, mail, the guild bank and the auction house - and not on the character. Questing, dungeons, gathering, crafting for yourself, vendors, repairs and the personal bank all keep working, so coin and materials still arrive. They simply have nowhere to go until the hold is lifted.
Can I still use my own alts while a hold is on?
No, and that surprises people. Moving stock or coin between your own characters uses the same mail and trade channels as moving it to a stranger, so a bank alt, a material shuttle and a main funding a new gatherer all stop at the same moment. Anything that depends on a second character should be treated as unavailable for the duration.
How long does a temporary economy hold last?
We have not seen a published length, so we are not quoting one. It is described as temporary rather than permanent, but whether the duration is fixed, decided case by case, or ended by review is not something we can confirm. If a clear statement appears we will add it with the source named rather than estimate.
What happens to mail and auctions that were already sent?
Unknown. We cannot say whether mail already in transit is delivered, whether a live auction settles normally, or whether a queued guild bank deposit completes. These are exactly the details that decide how much a hold actually costs, and none of them have been spelled out in anything we can point to.
Sources
- Blizzard's support site is where account restriction notices and the account actions they relate to are explained — Blizzard Support.
- The in-game terms that cover buying and selling in-game property for real money — Blizzard End User License Agreement.