1661

I’ve got no experience with real money game transactions, but I suspect that the items that are worth less than double the flat fee will simply never be listed on the auction house. The flat fee won’t drive the cost of base items up.

1662

What will Blizzard’s cut of the cash-out fee be? I’d imagine probably a % of the % then?

That’s where it gets really interesting. I can see it going a couple of ways. Let’s say Paypal are the provider.

You sell an item, Blizzard process it in their AH taking the flat listing and selling fees. They then pass the remainder of that transaction on to Paypal to process into real world currency.

Paypal will take a percentage of that depositing the remainder into your Paypal account, it’s how they operate. As big as Blizzard is, as much potential they may see in this market and as much as Paypal might want to secure this business, they won’t compromise their core business model to do so. That means their fee will be a percentage.

I see Blizzard doing three things on cash-out fee, two of which have a direct affect on the seller:

1 - Charge a flat fee for cash-out. They will easily justify this as how Paypal charge the seller is of no concern to them, Blizzard are merely facilitating the hand-off to Paypal.

2 - Charge a percentage of sell price before hand-off to Paypal. They will easily justify this as Paypal is charging a percentage, so they have to as well.

3 - Behind the scenes Blizzard will have gone to market for a 3rd party to provide cash-out service. As mentioned above, Paypal will want this business, as they may view it as having large potential. To secure becoming Blizzard’s provider, they will pay a margin or percentage of their percentage to Blizzard as part of the deal. This is contractual back-end and transparent to the seller, but it will definitely happen.

So, Blizzard, the clever sods, will likely have three streams of revenue from the seller - two flat, one yet to be determined, and one additional stream from Paypal, which will be percentage.

1663

Yep, absolutely correct, for the most part. The flat fee won’t drive the the cost of base items up, but it will effectively set the fee for which you will list a base item. Of course, by base item, I mean anything that is actually worth selling - there will be no potions of healing being listed in the RL AH.

Market demand will determine what is worth listing very early and it is still very likely there will be a 100x differential between the lowest item you would actually attempt to list and the uber elite, one in a squillion, I had to farm for days, Axe of Economics +5 that your Chinese subordinates managed to have drop.

1664

rolls eyes

1665

Is possible that consumables will be stackable, and sell as stacks.

A stack of 50 potions.

1666

Wait… what? Which is it?

1667

It’s only a boycott until release day, don’t worry.

1668

A number of people claim to boycott games on principle. I have principles too, and my number 1 gaming principle is that I refuse to miss out on a potentially good game, no matter how disappointed I am with certain design decisions.

If the design decisions are so bad that I don’t even want to play the game, well then thats not a boycott, its just an informed decision. Diablo 3 hasn’t got to that point yet.

1669

I have a bad experience boycoting games.
Wen I boycott a game, I wait until the game cost 5$. The problem is that wen I finnaly buy it, I don’t have much fun, and the game feels derivative and unnecesary.

Riding the hype wave helps ignore the lack of fressness a lot of AAA games. If you dismount the hype wave, and see the game as what it is, you may find your copy is not as fun the copy most people seems to talk about.

1670

That’s showing them!

1671

I don’t neccesarily have the same definition of boycott as other people.

1672

That is rich. LOL

1673

DRM isn’t a “design decision”, it’s a ball and chain around the ankle (and neck) of otherwise innocent games.

1674

People who boycott Diablo 3 when they HAVE a solid internet connection (as evident by the ranting) are being rediculous.

Also, people who claim to boycott the game will be the same people who have it day one and bitch about “skill X being OP in PvP” or something. Nerds. Sheesh.

1675

I personally don’t mind the online requirement and I think it makes ok sense given the nature of the game.

However, I can fully sympathise with people who don’t want to support that level of control over a product they’re paying for.

1676

I can sympathize with people who have a shitty internet connection or wanted to play where there isn’t internet like on an airplane for sure. I’m not sure why people would have an issue with Blizzard wanting to have control over their product in terms of keeping the duping/cheating down as well as piracy, especially in an environment where folks can actually acquire real money. I guess time will tell on how everything shakes out.

1677

Yo danger yo. Some people - even some of the people who are okay with it, like me - still think of video games as products, rather than services, which means that when they sell me my copy, the game itself is MY product. You’re brushing up against the whole Spielberg airbrushing the shotguns out of E.T. zone. I don’t care in this case because I don’t have time for content mods, but it’s a legitimate point of concern.

1678

Fair enough, of course. I definately believe there should be an offline option for those folks who understand they can never play that character online or participate in the auction house, to be honest I’m not sure WHY Blizzard won’t do that when they had it in at one point, but maybe they’ll change their minds if there is enough nerdrage.

But I also preferr to play in a gaming landscape where gold farmers/dupers aren’t runing the in-game economy, should I decide to look into that side of things. I’ll MOST likely play on my own or only with real life friends or my son though, so honestly a lot of these issues just don’t concern me overly much, so I might be insensitive for thoe affected, in which case I apologize.

1679

I am profesional webmaster, so I must sympathize with people who have a shitty internet connection, is part of my job. I must ask myself “how this webpage is going to work with a shitty internet”. Designers artist can think “lol, it work on my computer, so it must work everywhere”, but I don’t appreciate that mindset at all.

1680

I have no issue with that. Closed Battle.net was fine with me in Diablo 2. The difference is, Diablo 2 was playable offline, and on LAN/direct IP/open B.net. I don’t think there is any legitimate reason to deny me the former option, and even the latter is a questionable decision at best.

It also has real potential to give Blizzard unwarranted power over the ability to play the game you bought, and, although I probably trust Blizzard (not many other companies, but Blizzard’s track record on this is good) to keep the servers running indefinitely, in principle it means that they can be taken down permanently at any time and then no one gets to play ever again. Look at all the MMOs that have been shut down, and then tell me it’s no big deal to set up singleplayer games the same way.