Wow, so much fuss over the AH. My worry was the “always on” connectivity rule, which hurts me because I travel a bit and like non-internet games for those times.
I think you guys have, in all seriousness, debated for 65 pages about a feature that is just going to sort itself out on its own once the game launches. Whether it is hysterically awful or the cat’s ass, we’ll see.
I don’t personally plan to use the cash auction house. I see that mostly as a haven for grinders, Chinese farmers and Eastern European math hackers, at least early on. I’ll stick with the in-game AH, if I play enough to generate enough gold to afford stuff. If I’m right or wrong about that it really won’t be a cause for fuss for me personally either way. Unless you guys play foolishly and get sharked in the cash AH, I don’t see the rumpus for you, either.
The one thing that does nag at the back of my head, though, is that Blizz gets a cut of all the cash transactions. I can see this leading to a churn of new items (not necessarily new content) on a regular basis to keep people buying stuff. The “gold” AH is likely to be the bottom-tier bargain basement, while all the cool toys will go to the cash people. So, unlike WoW, where the real goodies go to the raiders, here it is just going to go to the punters. That does sound a bit more like extortion than gameplay to me, but since I’m not in in for the bleeding edge tip-top experience but rather just because it looks fun, it still doesn’t bother me that much.
Corporations aren’t in it for the love. It doesn’t make them evil to want to make a buck. Especially since their flagship product, WoW, appears to be on the wane, Blizz is looking for a new revenue stream. Blizzard has tried some hinky things before, though, so I’ll be watching.
Until they release more game info, it’s by far the most interesting thing to speculate on about the game. You couldn’t help speculating either.
I have to admit, These nightmare “what if?” scenarios about the AH causing Blizzard to rig drop rates so they can make a dime off each sale seem pretty absurd to me. Blizzard has a pretty amazing track record with making great games; I don’t understand why that doesn’t count for anything and instead hardened cynicism wins the day and we’re supposed to believe the designers are going to sell out even though their company is obscenely profitable already.
On the other hand, Blizzard shouldn’t get a pass just for being Blizzard (now Activision). Any company that integrates real money transactions to the degree that Diablo 3 is trying should get scrutinized.
idrisz
1965
Any company that integrates real money transactions to the degree that Diablo 3 is trying should get scrutinized.
that’s literally like every F2P games out there. except instead taking a cut, most of the companies pockets 100%!
Teiman
1966
Economy is a science, you can’t challenge it more than you can challenge gravity. But I hope the game is a success and everyone have a lot of fun with it :D
Nah, this is different, which is why everyone is talking about it.
How is Blizzard stand to gain more from the RMAH then Bioware stood to gain by selling the class pack DLCs for DA2 that gave you free, powerful items that levels up with you at the beginning of the game? Shouldn’t DA2 had been significantly more difficult to try to force those sales if any of the logic with the RMAH would hold true?
Should EQ2 have a glass wall where you have to buy items from their store to continue? EA sold cheat codes to Tiger Woods, Need for Speed, etc. Why weren’t those games punishingly difficult without buying the cheats?
Is there any existing case where a company has sold power and had balanced the game to be tedious unless you bought that power that isn’t a F2P game? I’ll freely admit a lot of F2P’s (ie FarmVille) make actions exceedingly tedious but let you purchase your way passed them, but is there any case of a retail boxed game being tedious without purchasing some power boost?
There have been a lot of DLC for a lot of games that amounted to getting free power. If this concern was in any way valid, wouldn’t we have already seen this sort of behavior? Why is it that Blizzard are the guys that are going to “sell out” and hamstring gameplay to push a model in which they only make a fraction on sales as opposed to all the other games that have been making 100% on them?
AlanQ
1969
Because many fanboys/nerds have an intense sense of entitlement, complain about everything, and don’t deal well with change.
KevinC
1970
What does DLC have to do with a RMT Auction House? Also, in terms of “power”, there’s a big difference between SP and MP games when it comes to what is generally considered acceptable (at least that’s the case for me and my social circle).
To answer your question, though, there’s a lot of factors. For one, there’s a huge fan base for Diablo 2, so there’s going to be a lot of people to vocalize their displeasure in a thread like this. Second, a lot of people playing Diablo 2 still (or played it for a long period of time back in the day on battle.net) were heavily involved in the Trading scene. The AH directly impacts that in the sequel, and I can understand why there’s a lot of worry.
For me? I hate this money-grubbing shit, period. I’m not going to be upset if Tiger Woods 2011 has a DLC pack for dildo-shaped clubs that can guarantee a hole in one because I don’t care about the game. Diablo 3 on the other hand is a game I’m interested in. I’m already going to be out $60 for the game, so I’m not exactly pleased to be losing SP offline and LAN in an attempt to funnel me towards the AH or so Bobby Kotick doesn’t wee down his leg at the thought of people pirating the game.
It’s Blizzard’s prerogative to make more money, but if they want me to shell out more cash at least offer me something. I’d be happy to pay for DLC which adds new areas to explore, new classes, new items, etc, but instead I get my options reduced because Blizzard wants me to use the AH.
This kind of thing is getting annoying enough to me that I’ll probably skip out on Diablo 3 which aggravates me because I’ve been looking forward to it for a long time. For the record, though, it’s primarily the always-on thing that bugs me. The RMT AH bugs me most because I think it factored heavily into their always-on requirement. As Bobby Kotick said in an interview, “Blizzard learned a lesson with Starcraft 2. They won’t release a game again without a recurring form of revenue” or some-such. Bleh.
If WoW is any indication it will be expected that most people are going to make use of the AH, and if the quote from someone at Blizzard/Activision is true, they are planning for the RMAH to be more popular than the gold AH. They might balance the game around using the RMAH because they expect most people to use it, even if they don’t have nefarious reasons behind it. If you don’t plan on using the RMAH, the game might not be balanced for you. But it’s too early to really say.
How exactly would they balance around one AH vs the other when the same gear drops either way? They can plan for the RMAH to be more popular, but that doesn’t mean it will be.
It will be more popular, because when someone gets some uber-loot, they will be more inclined to sell it for real money than for in-game currency. Especially when in-game currency will probably be less useful in-game than real money. Consider that there will be direct in-game money/real money trade anyway, and the distinction becomes almost moot - in-game money will have a real-money value anyway.
They are clever to give everyone some free listings each week - that will mean that people who don’t want to put money into their Battlenet accounts will be able to get a balance in there by selling a few items each week, so there will be customers there more or less right away, which means that’s where people will put the good items.
It’s actually a pretty clever system. Once any amount of cash goes into the economy, Blizzard will have 2 or 3 opportunities at a minimum to take a cut before that money can get out again. It’s not all that intrusive to customers who don’t want to spend money on the game on an on-going basis, either. I’m still not sure how I feel about it, but if it’s a way to prevent piracy/make a good profit for the devs without forcing the RMT system onto people who don’t want it, then maybe it’s not so bad.
Mordrak
1974
Are you asking how do you design gameplay to encourage the use of one AH over the other?
The two main ways they can influence that is rarity (increasing the value) as has been mentioned, but also designing gameplay systems which create a greater demand for rare items (further increasing value). Both are seen a lot in F2P MMOs, which include crafting and item enhancement systems which will consume gear either by breaking it, or breaking it down into components
Dragon Nest does both actually. Enhancing your gear past a certain point runs the risk of destroying the gear. Plus you can break gear down into pieces which can be used to enhance other equipment or in crafting.
Both increase rarity by consuming items. The latter increases demand. That’s just one example.
Edit: The core assumption here is that increase the value of items overall (which increases both gold and RMT value), will increase the likelihood that someone will want to sell items for cold hard cash. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable assumption, but maybe you do.
They’re smarter than me at this kind of thing and they said they think most people will use the RMAH. I couldn’t tell you if that’s going to really be the case or not.
Teiman
1976
A solution for the biggest problems is to add a “taint mode”. Once you have posted a object in the gold money AH, you can’t post this object in the money AH, the object is “tainted”. This way you stop people from buying objects from the gold AH to sell for money.
I would pay triple if Blizzard included a taint mode in Diablo 3.
idrisz
1978
doesn’t it cost real money to post item on RM market? if so there is already a dis-incentive to spam worthless junk on the RM market.
Tony_M
1979
Woah! Forget the pain and injustice of UbiDRM and Mod bans. You lost a level 97 hardcore character? That is pain and injustice. How did it happen? (and don’t even pretend you don’t remember).
Tony
