Blizzard has completed a fresh round of enforcement against real-money trading on retail World of Warcraft, and the statement comes with a rule plenty of carry deals have been ignoring: gold has to move directly from the player buying the carry — or any other service — to the player providing it. Gold routed through a middleman is not safe. Wowhead carried the statement at 16:54 CDT on October 27 (05:54 Beijing time, October 28).

The pattern Blizzard called out: laundered gold paying for carries

The statement spells out one specific scheme: "Some of the accounts actioned purchased the illicit gold and had the seller deliver it to a different player who provided a service to the purchaser, such as a raid carry." Buyers were not taking delivery themselves — they had the gold seller pay the carry team directly, pushing illicit gold straight into carry transactions.

Blizzard's warning is blunt: "gold received from an intermediate player has an extremely high likelihood of being illicit gold that was part of an RMT." Two consequences are named: account suspension and removal of the illicit gold. Guilds are included too — "Guilds that provide carries to players, who pay for them with gold that comes from an intermediate, are at risk of seeing that gold removed by Blizzard."

Not announced: how many accounts, for how long, and how they were found

  • How many accounts were actioned, and for how long — not announced
  • How the accounts were identified — not announced
  • Which regions are covered, and whether more waves are coming — not announced

Don't fill those gaps in on Blizzard's behalf; wait for the next statement.

Paying for a carry: one safe path

The actionable line in the statement is a single instruction: always transfer gold directly from the player buying the carry to the player providing it, with no third party in between. Same when a guild is on the selling side — the payment should still come straight from the buyer's character.

If you have taken gold through an intermediate before, Blizzard offered no self-check tool and no remediation path; that was not announced either. One clarification so the two stories don't blur: this is a retail WoW action, separate from the October 14 economy freeze on the WoW Forever server (our coverage) — different event, different mechanism.

The full statement is up on Wowhead: Blizzard Takes Action Against RMT on Retail WoW – Gold Transactions Should Be Direct.