Blizzard's anti-RMT arsenal has a new weapon: Temporary Economy Holds are now live in Forever. If an account is suspected of involvement in Real Money Trade — either selling or receiving illicit gold — it enters a hold state where trade, mail, guild banks and the Auction House are all restricted until the investigation concludes.
What the system is for: earlier measures (trade warnings, gold-buyer bans) acted after the fact — once illicit gold was already circulating. The hold flips that: it intercepts suspicious gold before it transfers or enters the economy, buying Blizzard time for a thorough investigation.
The three questions players will ask:
- Will I get caught in it? Per the blue post: players playing normally are unlikely to ever see this restriction. If a hold is applied by mistake, it is automatically removed once the investigation clears the account, and a hold alone leaves no permanent strikes on the account unless RMT involvement is later proven.
- How long does it last? No fixed duration was given — the hold lifts when the investigation resolves. Trading functions stay locked in the meantime; the rest of the game is unaffected.
- What about false positives? Blizzard acknowledges the new system "may have false positives while things are fine tuned" and asks affected players to come forward.
And a note for the wider franchise: if the system proves successful in Forever, it will be deployed to all versions of World of Warcraft.
Placed on the recent timeline, the anti-RMT playbook is now complete: trade warning prompts → two thousand gold-buyer bans → the GDKP ban (NA/EU) → and now circulation-level freezes. The advice for normal players hasn't changed: stay away from off-platform gold trading, and keep in-game records for large gold transfers like GDKP splits. Background in the GDKP scope clarification and the gold-buyer penalties digest; common questions in the FAQ.
Source: Wowhead relaying Blizzard's official blue post (official confirmation), published 2026-10-14.