How Gold Trade Detection and Appeals Work
Choosing a seller is one question; what happens afterwards is another. This page covers the part that sits outside the seller directory: which trades the rules actually describe, what a realm records about a transfer, what an account action covers, and how an appeal is filed when a review lands on ordinary play. Where Blizzard has published nothing, we say so instead of filling the gap.
Which trades the rules describe
Buying gold and selling it are not two separate rules in Forever. Both sit under the same real-money trading line in Blizzard's terms, which treats an exchange of in-game property for money outside the game as the issue, regardless of which side an account is on. Forever adds nothing that softens that: with no sanctioned conversion inside the client, there is no version of the trade the publisher is party to. Whether the offer appears in trade chat or on a website, published real-money trading rules read the same way for both parties.
What the policy does not touch is the large part of the Forever market that is paid in coin. Runs, crafting orders, enchants, summons and tournament buy-ins move gold between players all day, and none of that is a real-money transaction. The distinction matters because the volume is high: services paid in gold produce exactly the kind of one-sided transfer that looks unusual when it is read on its own. Knowing which of your own trades fall on which side of that line is the first half of understanding why a review happens at all.
What a realm records about a transfer
Blizzard has not published how detection works, and anybody quoting thresholds is guessing. What is observable from the player side is narrower. The server keeps a record of trades, mail, auction activity and guild bank movement together with the characters involved, and that record exists whether or not anyone ever reads it. In practice the data a realm keeps is the raw material any later review works from, which is why the shape of a transfer matters more than the amount in it.
The patterns people describe are the ones that stand out in that record rather than in a chat window. A character with no play history handing a sum to a stranger and logging out, several unrelated characters delivering to one recipient in sequence, or a route that always runs through the same intermediary mailbox all read differently from a guild treasurer paying a crafter. The delivery methods sellers use are the part of the trade a buyer has least control over and the part a record describes most clearly.
How much of this is automated and how much is read by a person is not something we can state. There are also structural limits on how much can move at once, and caps on large transfers shape the shape of a delivery before any review is involved. Treat the whole detection side as a black box with known inputs and unpublished rules.
What an account action covers
Outcomes are not one thing. Documented possibilities range from removal of the gold involved in a transfer, through a temporary hold on the account, to closure of it. Blizzard describes these as separate measures rather than a fixed ladder, and has not published which input produces which result. The practical question for most players is scope: an action is taken against an account rather than against the character that made the trade, so the scope of an account action is wider than the roster slot it started on.
While something is being looked at, parts of the economy can simply stop working for that account. Players describe mail sitting undelivered, trades refusing to complete and coin unavailable to spend. We have no numbers on how often this happens or for how long, but a hold on gold and trades is the condition most people meet first, before any decision is communicated. Planning around it is mostly a matter of not having a raid week's funds parked on one character.
When the flag lands on normal play
Ordinary Forever play produces transfers that look odd out of context. A guild bank filled by members before a raid week, a bank alt consolidating an evening of gathering, a tip on a crafting order that is larger than the materials, a tournament pot held by one organiser. None of that is a real-money trade, and gold held in a guild bank is specifically the case where one account receives from many with nothing visibly going back. Moving coin between your own characters is the same situation at a smaller scale.
If a review lands on one of those, the route is a ticket through Blizzard support rather than a forum thread. What helps is being able to describe the trade plainly: who the other party was, what was given in return, and when. Keeping guild bank logs and remembering the names of the crafters you pay costs nothing and turns an appeal from an assertion into a record. Appeals are read, and decisions are reversed; neither of those facts says anything about any individual case.
What we do not know. Blizzard has not published appeal timelines, reversal rates, or any description of the detection signals themselves. Reports circulating from the test realm are player accounts without documentation attached, and enforcement claims from the beta should be read as unverified until a support note or a patch note says otherwise. We will add specifics here when there are published ones to add, and not before.
Questions
Is selling gold treated differently from buying it?
Not in the terms themselves. The real-money trading rule describes the exchange rather than the direction, so an account that takes money for in-game property and an account that pays it are both covered. Blizzard has not published a breakdown of how often each side is actioned, so any claim that one side is safer than the other is opinion rather than policy.
Does paying another player in gold for a service count?
No. Runs, crafting orders, enchants, summons and tournament buy-ins are in-game trades paid in in-game currency, and the policy is about money leaving the game. The practical complication is that some of these produce one-sided transfers that resemble a delivery when read without context, which is why a clear record of what was bought is useful if the trade is ever queried.
What happens to the gold involved in a flagged trade?
Removal of the gold is one of the documented measures, and it can be applied without the account being closed. Blizzard has not published how the amount is calculated or whether it tracks the coin through later trades, so we do not state a rule for it. During a review, players also describe coin and mail being unavailable before any decision is given.
How do I appeal if a review lands on ordinary play?
Through a support ticket on the account in question, stating what the trade was, who the other party was and what was received in return. Guild bank logs and the names of crafters you paid are the kind of detail that turns an appeal into something checkable. We have no published figures on how long a review takes or how often one is reversed, and we are not going to invent them.
Sources
- Blizzard's support site, where account actions are explained and appeals are filed — Blizzard Support.
- The terms and licence documents that define real-money trading for all Blizzard titles — Blizzard legal documents.