The scope of the GDKP ban finally has an official answer. At BlizzCon 2026, Blizzard announced it would ban GDKP in Forever to protect social experiences — keeping resource-poor players from being priced out of content entirely, and removing the incentive to buy gold and the laundering it enables. What was never clear was which regions the ban covers. In a 4Gamers Taiwan interview with Blizzard's Clay Stone and Holly Longdale, the answer came:

  • The GDKP ban applies only to North America and Europe — other regions are unaffected, matching the approach taken in Season of Discovery and the Anniversary realms.

For Chinese-speaking players the implication is direct: if your gold-run culture lives outside NA/EU, this ban does not touch your realm (local operational rules always govern final implementation).

Two more economy notes from the same interview are worth keeping:

  • Players will earn more gold. Clay Stone confirmed the auction house is a core part of the game and that Forever currently lacks the optimized gold-making methods the original Classic had; the design expectation is that players will earn significantly more gold than in original Classic.
  • Black Lotus capped at 50 gold. Having learned from managing the economy, Blizzard will let vendors sell it with the price capped — a hard price anchor for the most infamous rare material.

These sit on the same board as the earlier anti-RMT moves (trade warnings, gold-buyer bans): suppress buying demand on one side, widen legitimate earning on the other, and pin key material prices. For players, the advice stays the same: avoid off-platform gold trading, check your region's rules before joining a GDKP run, and don't assume Classic-era auction house patterns carry over. Background reading: our earlier daily digest on gold-buyer penalties and the FAQ; the raid content itself lives on the raids page.

Source: Wowhead relaying the 4Gamers Taiwan interview with Clay Stone and Holly Longdale (media interview with Blizzard), published 2026-10-10. Regional implementation is governed by local operating announcements.