Senior Game Designer Josh Greenfield addressed the subject directly during Blizzard’s September 17 Forever Q&A, with Icy Veins publishing a transcript of his explanation. The short answer was wonderfully uncomplicated: no, GDKP will not be allowed. The longer answer tells us quite a lot about the kind of endgame Blizzard wants Forever to become.
Blizzard Says GDKP Can Replace Traditional Guild Raiding
For anyone who has managed to avoid several years of Classic WoW arguments, GDKP stands for Gold Dragon Kill Points. Instead of rolling normally on dropped items, raid members bid gold. The gold collected during the run is then divided among the participants, meaning geared players can earn money by carrying while wealthier characters can buy the items they need.
On paper, it creates an elegant player-driven economy.
Blizzard’s problem begins when that economy becomes the default way people raid.
Greenfield said Blizzard has watched regions where GDKP became sufficiently common that it could begin to overtake traditional guild structures. That directly conflicts with one of Forever’s central design pillars: protecting social experiences.
This lines up with the raid structure Blizzard revealed this week. every Forever raid tier is planned to contain both 10-player and 20-player raids, specifically giving groups a predictable path from dungeon teams into stable raid guilds. Blizzard is building an endgame around knowing who you raid with every week.
A system where the most efficient solution becomes arriving with a giant bag of gold points in the opposite direction.
The New-Player Problem May Be Even Bigger
Greenfield also highlighted what happens once GDKP becomes widespread enough that new players are expected to participate in it.
A long-established player can arrive with huge gold reserves, buy the item they need and eventually make some of that money back from later runs. A new player starts with neither gear nor gold.
That creates what Blizzard describes as a significant barrier to entry.
And when the apparent solution is “buy more gold,” the line between a player-created loot system and real-money trading becomes uncomfortable very quickly.
This is particularly relevant because Forever currently has no plans for WoW Tokens or Character Boosts. Blizzard wants leveling, gold and progression to retain weight. A raid environment where players feel pressured to purchase illicit gold would undermine that philosophy almost immediately.
GDKP Also Makes Dirty Gold Harder to Remove
Blizzard is not pretending that banning GDKP magically eliminates botting or gold sellers.
Greenfield instead described GDKP as an especially effective mechanism for bad actors to move large amounts of gold through the economy. Blizzard can ban bots, sellers and buyers and attempt to reclaim illicit gold, but once that gold has been distributed through raid payouts across many otherwise legitimate accounts, removing it becomes considerably more complicated.
Forever will therefore launch with more active economic monitoring.
Blizzard says it plans to watch both the inflow and outflow of resources and intervene when necessary, using lessons from Season of Discovery. Greenfield specifically pointed to Season of Discovery’s level 60 economy as an example where GDKP was absent and Blizzard actively managed resource availability.
That approach fits the increasingly interconnected economy emerging from the Forever beta. crafted tier sets can turn unwanted raid gear into valuable crafting materials, while First Aid is taking over Healing Potions and spreading demand for herbs beyond Alchemists.
Blizzard clearly wants gold to matter.
It just does not want gold to become the raid leader.
The Season of Discovery Experiment Matters Here
Forever is not Blizzard’s first attempt at banning GDKP.
Season of Discovery prohibited the practice beginning in Phase 2, giving the Classic team a lengthy real-world experiment with an economy where gold-bid raiding was removed from the equation. The ban certainly did not eradicate botting or gold buying, and critics have repeatedly pointed to that fact.
Blizzard’s argument, however, is not that GDKP is the single cause of every economic problem in Classic WoW.
It is that allowing GDKP introduces additional problems the developers do not want in Forever: pressure on guild structures, a higher barrier for newcomers and a convenient channel for distributing purchased gold.
That is a narrower claim, and one Blizzard now has several years of Classic data to evaluate.
Forever Keeps Choosing Social Friction Over Convenience
The GDKP decision makes even more sense when placed beside everything else Blizzard has announced.
Forever launches without Flex Raiding. Horde and Alliance cannot raid together. Rated PvP is being replaced by a broader seasonal Honor track at launch. Blizzard is even hiding new item stats until players actually discover them, rather than allowing the entire gearing game to be solved before the first raid opens.
None of these choices maximize convenience.
They maximize reasons to interact with other players.
That seems to be Blizzard’s bet with Forever. The company cannot recreate 2004 by deleting twenty-two years of player knowledge, but it can deliberately build systems where guilds, professions, reputation and community relationships matter more than they do in many modern versions of WoW.
GDKP simply does not fit that experiment.
Forever still wants you to arrive at the raid with something valuable.
Blizzard would just prefer it to be nine friends rather than 40,000 gold.
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