posted
Don't know if anyone knew about this or not, but I thought it was pretty interesting.
To those that have played Diablo II or World of Warcraft, you know about the "Chinese Gold Farmers" that sell gold or items for real currency. This is a bannable offense in both games and has turned into a huge industry.
Well, Blizzard decided to do something different for Diablo III. Diablo III will utilize an Auction House like World of Warcraft, but the items will be bought and sold using... Real Currency!
It will cost you a small fee to post the auction as well as a small cut once it sells, bringing Blizzard some money. The money you make can be sent to your battle.net account as "store credit" to be used in the store to pay for goods, subscriptions, or in game items such as mounts and pets for World of Warcraft. It can also be sent to a paypal account so you can cash out.
I don't know how I feel about it. While it is nice to see Blizzard try to "legalize" this for their games, it also worries me. If someone's battle.net account gets hacked, what will happen if the hackers have access to those funds?
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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posted
This is not a good idea, games that I use to detach from reality for a little bit do not need a direct feed into my bank account. Besides, how many players are minors and how many of them might misappropriate their parents card information just to do something in game that should be just that, in game.
Bravo Blizzard for figuring out how to take over the gold farmers industry, but if I am playing a game that involves real money to do mundane things like post to the auction house I would stop playing that game. And speaking as a former WoW player any mount that was restricted to real currency transactions would out of favor for most players, anyone can get the expensive in game mount if they grind long enough but few players get the super rare drop mounts from heroic instances.
Posts: 2302 | Registered: Aug 2008
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Having played Everquest and EQ2 for years, I don't like this idea at all. Then again, this isn't really an MMO like WoW or EQ, so it might pan out differently.
Posts: 1324 | Registered: Feb 2011
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I don't think I mentioned it.... In game gold auctions will also be available. So if you want to buy items but don't want to link your battle.net account to a paypal account, you don't have to. There will be completely different auction houses.
Does that change your mind at all AH?
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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If I can play on MP servers that are guaranteed independent of participation in microtrans auction garbage, idc
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I don't inherently mind this - the black market would exist anyway. This keeps it more under blizzard's control, reduces spam and gives less incentive to hack accounts.
The one thing that I'm concerned about as that everyone will try to sell things for profit rather than gold, so the "regular" AH might have a worse selection.
I think Samp's solution would be best.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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If I can earn back my initial $50-$60 investment over the entire time I play the game, it will be a huge perk for me.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I see it the way Black Blade does. If I sell a few items for $5 each I could pay for my WoW subscription with it.
Samp, from what I understand there will be no difference in servers. There will only be a regional servers, and each will contain both types of auction houses.
Then again the Auction House is completely optional. You don't have to use it to have fun in the game.
I think it is a positive thing. If I can make a bit of money by playing a game, I'm all for it.
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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quote:Then again the Auction House is completely optional. You don't have to use it to have fun in the game.
But you may need it to remain competitive. (Overall I'm not that worried about it, but I can see it being an issue for some people)
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Hardcore characters will not be able to use the real money auction house. Blizzard wants to "save people from themselves" as the worst thing would be to dump a lot of money into a character and then have the character die and lose everything.
quote:Hardcore characters will not be able to use the real money auction house. Blizzard wants to "save people from themselves" as the worst thing would be to dump a lot of money into a character and then have the character die and lose everything.
Interesting.
Blizzard cares about teen suicide rates. Lets see how Activision feels about it. Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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It will be super interesting from an economic/sociological perspective. Will prices be low because every farmer and teen will be selling wares or will prices be high because there will be such a big market of buyers?
I hope blizz's cut isn't crazy. 15% seems reasonable to take to cash. I bet it's higher though.
Posts: 1261 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I bet this will enable people who sit in a room with bottle to pee in and never leave their house..."Look how much money I made today!"
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: I don't think I mentioned it.... In game gold auctions will also be available. So if you want to buy items but don't want to link your battle.net account to a paypal account, you don't have to. There will be completely different auction houses.
Does that change your mind at all AH?
Not entirely, allowing some players to substitute in game currency with real currency is still unbalanced IMO.
Posts: 2302 | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Hardcore characters will not be able to use the real money auction house. Blizzard wants to "save people from themselves" as the worst thing would be to dump a lot of money into a character and then have the character die and lose everything.
Interesting.
They also want to save themselves from people, kinda.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: I bet this will enable people who sit in a room with bottle to pee in and never leave their house..."Look how much money I made today!"
Hey, my lazy brother is already planning this. He hasn't worked in 3 years, and when I told him he decided that would be his full time job. That way he can still collect government assistance and make extra money on the side without the government ever knowing.
posted
Hey man, if you think you can hack a decent amount of cash from playing Diablo III's markets, that's not a bad bit of entrepreneurship.
The people who get any serious money from it won't be the item farmers, though. It'll be the EVE-style market manipulators, and nearly anyone who tells themselves that this is what they're going to be doing are not aware that they're not actually canny enough to pull it off.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Up until Wrath of the Lich King (maybe reaching level 70 in Burning Crusade) I made a lot more money buying and selling things from the AH than actually going out and farming. And I know perfectly well that I *wasn't* that good at it.
I know that EVE is orders of magnitude more complex than that. If I were going to do that, I'd honestly rather have an actual job.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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I don't know about the eve markets, but blizzard is going to make it difficult to game the system as much as in wow auction houses by banning any auction mods.
Posts: 1261 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote:Originally posted by dabbler: I don't know about the eve markets, but blizzard is going to make it difficult to game the system as much as in wow auction houses by banning any auction mods.
While I hope Blizzard is successful in this, I don't know how they are going to be able to track it well. There are bot programs in World of Warcraft that have been used for 3+ years that Blizzard has not been able to stop.
Where there's a will there's a way.
Also, in World of Warcraft multi-boxing is not against the ToS. I am wondering if they will take the same stance for Diablo III. I can just imagine multi-boxing players farming high level dungeons for loot over and over with characters decked out in full magic find items. My brother is already talking about it.
And if you can sell 2 items for $5 each hour, hey, that is $10 an hour.
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: And if you can sell 2 items for $5 each hour, hey, that is $10 an hour.
The cost per hour would have to factor in the time spent getting the items, not how many of them you sold in a given timeframe (or not just that).
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
Something else to think about. Loot will be character independant, meaning if you see something drop, nobody else can pick it up or even see it.
That should cut down on all of those hackers that had programs to automatically pick items up.
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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They also said that very few (almost none) items will be soulbound, so you can sell the item you previously purchased. Though there is some sort of cooldown to reduce flipping.
Posts: 1261 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I gotta say that as a stay at home dad, if I can generate some extra income to the family by playing a video game...it is appealing. I'll be keeping an eye on this to see how it works out.
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:I gotta say that as a stay at home dad, if I can generate some extra income to the family by playing a video game...it is appealing.
The currency generated by playing the game itself would be extraordinarily minimal compared to what degree of attention and focus it would require you to take off of your kids and the house.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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In the end, you're going to be "paying" yourself at most (and most likely a lot less) than the rate at which gold farmers generate (such as the aforementioned prisoners in China doing hard labour) minus Blizzard's cut.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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That'll be fine on its own, I am amazed that most of my friends will be able to pay off this game. I probably won't play it near enough to earn back what I put into it, but still, it's a fun idea. Especially considering I can use the D3 auctionhouse to buy myself sparkleponies in WOW.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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The money generated probably won't equate to what you could make per hour in real life. That's how it goes in most games that allow this type of thing.
Posts: 1324 | Registered: Feb 2011
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quote:Originally posted by Jeff C.: The money generated probably won't equate to what you could make per hour in real life. That's how it goes in most games that allow this type of thing.
Well sure, but seeing as how 99.9% of games merely take your money and never give any back it's still better.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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All I'm saying is that I want to keep an eye on it, because -if- it is profitable, I wouldn't mind trying it out. I do own all the other Diablos and did enjoy them.
It will most likely -not- be worth doing for profit, only for the fun of the game. We shall see...I'm not holding my breath.
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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As I made note of before, there is a way to make real money off of this. But that's only through marketplace manipulation, not being the farmers.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: As I made note of before, there is a way to make real money off of this. But that's only through marketplace manipulation, not being the farmers.
Psh, I won't be inviting you to *my* guild. You aren't a "contributor".
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Hey, I'll just accumulate a ton of items, and if I ever want to buy a new shiny toy I'll just flood the AH and hope for the best!
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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The point is that that option already exists, and blizzard is sick of spending resources fighting the black market, so they're co-opting it instead.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: As I made note of before, there is a way to make real money off of this. But that's only through marketplace manipulation, not being the farmers.
Psh, I won't be inviting you to *my* guild. You aren't a "contributor".
what's the line on that? I'm a 'captain of industry,' a Galtian superhero. One of the Rational Actors that makes your needs-based economy of fake pixelweapons provide for you. Shelving your petulant collectivist jealousy upon my aspiration to the means of wealth generation is just more statist punishment of the productive.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I think its interesting that so many people think this they are likely to make money off this but no one here has indicated they are likely to spend money on this. It's a zero sum game and the house always comes out positive which means that on average, the players will end up spending more money this way.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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I have NO idea how this is supposed to be a zero-sum game, when the objects in question related to wealth generation are generated limitlessly via play.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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To be honest unless Blizzard actively adds new content/items every few months the way they do with WoW, I don't see it becoming a zero sum game. There will always be those that will want the best armor, weapons, and trinkets. Rarely are those items actually required to farm or beat a certain level. Since that is the case, I think after getting a character to a certain point I would probably make the decision to sell that shiny Stone of Jordan (Or Diablo 3 Equivalent) instead of using it myself.
In WoW I get sick of raiding and wiping on a hard mode boss for 4 hours straight (Hard Mode Ragnaros ftl) but I'm sure I could spend 4 hours farming the same dungeon for items in Diablo 3 and still have fun.
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: The point is that that option already exists, and blizzard is sick of spending resources fighting the black market, so they're co-opting it instead.
This. The market is going to exist anyway. You could always buy power. By running it themselves they can take a cut and have the game profit them as long as people are trading.
Posts: 805 | Registered: Jun 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: To be honest unless Blizzard actively adds new content/items every few months the way they do with WoW, I don't see it becoming a zero sum game. There will always be those that will want the best armor, weapons, and trinkets. Rarely are those items actually required to farm or beat a certain level. Since that is the case, I think after getting a character to a certain point I would probably make the decision to sell that shiny Stone of Jordan (Or Diablo 3 Equivalent) instead of using it myself.
In WoW I get sick of raiding and wiping on a hard mode boss for 4 hours straight (Hard Mode Ragnaros ftl) but I'm sure I could spend 4 hours farming the same dungeon for items in Diablo 3 and still have fun.
I hated wow until I could be part of a raiding group that wouldn't wipe. Now there are a lot of cataclysm raids which can be done pretty casually.
Posts: 805 | Registered: Jun 2009
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Hard mode Ragnaros is not a pretty casual fight.
I'm glad I no longer have to find 24 other people to raid, but I'm sad that I frequently have to sit 4 dps because all our raiders show up.
Posts: 1261 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I didn't, but I am part of the staff on www.moba-champions.com now. We have a weekly webcast called Beyond the Rift every Tuesday night at 10 PM EST. We mostly cover League of Legends right now, but we also go into HoN, DoTA2, and other Moba games. We also will be adding Diablo 3 into our show soon. If you'd like to come watch and support us, you are more than welcome to. I usually give away a couple of $10 RP cards every week, and we have a good chat room going during the show.
I've contacted Blizzard about getting some beta keys, hopefully they will hook us up. If I get any extras I'll give them away here.
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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