World Of Warcraft: Forever Isn’t Even Out Yet, But It’s Already Dealing With A Gold Buying Scandal

I’ve been playing and enjoying the World of Warcraft: Forever beta, but I’m not putting too much investment into it. After all, my character is going to be wiped when the game officially launches on November 4, and any cool items I’ve gotten or gold I’ve earned will disappear with her. I guess I can kind of understand why some hardcore players are becoming more deeply invested in their beta characters: it’s still a fantasy adventure you’re having, and even if you play the same type of character over again, what happens in the beta will be a unique adventure to you.

But what’s totally eluding me is why anyone would bother outright breaking WoW‘s terms of service to buy in-game gold with real money, in a beta, for a character that won’t even exist in just over a month, all while broadcasting that violation to hundreds of viewers.

Baffling as this is, it is nonetheless the scandal du jour in the WoW: Forever community. Yeah, people are paying real, actual money to others in exchange for large quantities of gold in the WoW: Forever beta. This is weird and foolish enough on its own, and something Blizzard has said it is taking action on now and will continue to do so in the full game:

Real money transactions (RMT) are not acceptable in World of Warcraft, and we’re taking steps to address RMT in the WoW: Forever Beta, and of course, when WoW: Forever goes live and beyond.

It’s important to know that while we have always actioned RMT seller’s accounts as quickly as possible, we will increasingly take action against buyers’ accounts. That means that we will remove the illicit gold from the recipient, and/or take further actions, which can include closing accounts.

We’re once again asking all players to be very cautious when it comes to accepting gifts from strangers or other one-sided transactions. If it becomes apparent that a recipient knew or should-have-known that gold wasn’t from a legitimate source, they may be subject to account actions as well.

But there’s another layer to it that’s particularly upsetting to the community. A popular WoW streamer has now become tangled up in this issue, not by buying gold himself (probably), but by receiving large quantities of gold from people in his chat that seems to have been purchased with real money. The streamer himself isn’t spending money (again, probably), but he’s benefitting from the transaction, almost certainly with knowledge of where the gold is coming from.

The primary culprit at the moment is a streamer named Ziqoftw (Ziqo), who has admitted he received around 520 gold from viewers across a couple of different transactions (here’s one of them). This is, I want to emphasize, a very large sum of gold in WoW: Forever, whose beta has only been out for a few weeks and in which the economy is vastly different from that in retail WoW, where characters are routinely racking up and spending hundreds of thousands in gold. While it’s theoretically possible for someone to have amassed several hundred gold in WoW: Forever, low-level characters aren’t usually running around a few-weeks-old beta with hundreds in gold and just handing it out like candy.

Ziqo was not banned for this, but he was punished. The gold on the character that received the large sums from others was almost entirely wiped, down to just a few silver, while the gold on his other characters was left intact. Now, you might ask: what if Ziqo didn’t realize it was bought gold? Well, as many point out, Ziqo isn’t just some new player with no idea what’s going on. He understands how WoW‘s economy works, and should know better. That much gold all in one place is extremely suspicious.

The most generous possible reading is that Ziqo did something incredibly foolish here, but what’s more likely is that he absolutely knew and happily benefitted from his viewers buying gold for him, whether or not he asked them directly himself to do so. Worst-case scenario, he actually bought the gold himself, though there’s no evidence of that being the case. Regardless of where on the spectrum this incident falls, he’s certainly not helping his innocence with stuff like this clip, in which he mocks the idea of closely examining suspicious transactions by pretending to examine the legitimacy of a trade of a single glass of milk. And if Ziqo did know what he was doing, he wouldn’t be the only streamer actively encouraging chat to buy gold for him. For instance, here’s a recent clip [Warning: clip contains an ableist slur] of WoW streamer Payo saying, “I never buy gold. Ever. I told my chat to do it for me.”

All of this is why many, many WoW community members are calling for harsher punishment not just for gold sellers and buyers, but also for streamers who engage in this sort of thing, soliciting and accepting donations of any kind from their viewers and using their notoriety to get ahead. Ziqo has routinely and recently partnered with Blizzard on lots of official events, which is why many are suggesting he hasn’t suffered worse consequences. And now the WoW subreddits are full of posts like these, with players feeling the developer has massively backpedaled on its very recent promise to crack down on a game economy–ruining enterprise.

Right now, the ball is in Blizzard’s court to either explain itself and reassure players that RMTs will be taken seriously once WoW: Forever launches, or to take further action against Ziqo, Payo, and any other high-profile individual who is benefitting from RMTs. We’ve reached out to Blizzard for comment on this and will update if and when we hear back.