Diablo III - Auction House

[BloodOmen]

For those of you that have not read Diablo III will have an auction house in which you can sell ingame items/gold for real life money to other players (this does not mean you have to as there is a gold based auction house also)

you can read more about it @ MMO-Champion - Diablo 3 Auction House Announced - Spend and Earn Real Life Money!!

Seems they've finally found a way to shaft gold farmers.

/discuss

Edit: I don't think its a bad idea personally, i'm sure as you'll read you will begin to understand why as apose to just looking at what i've wrote above and thinking "Fucking greedy cunt blizzard".

 

[LordjOX]

To be fair, I suspect this is just going to be even more incentives to creating advanced bots for the game.

 

[BloodOmen]

Aye but then again bots will always be a problem in any online game, thats down to blizzard to clean up. They said they were going to come down hard on botters in D3 to the point where they would seize the RL assets made from botting.

Not having the Auction House would be no different pretty much, people would just buy from illegal websites than rather than from players, good move by blizzard to eliminate gold sellers.

 

[ST^]

I've seen a lot of complaints but I don't understand why. People would just sell items on ebay otherwise. Seems like a good decision.

I'm not as keen on the idea of always-online DRM, but that's another matter entirely...

 

[pikeh]

Mixed feelings, Its kinda turning the inevitable farmers legit, meaning less scams etc, but I would rather they just introduce a monthly fee.

Something I liked from D2 was the sheer randomness of the drops, the thrill of seeing the rarest item that mob can drop, pling to the ground, this kinda makes that feeling a bit muted, but then again, that could then buy you a pint of Biddendens or smt... nggh.

 

[pikeh]

Actually, scratch that last comment, Im pretty excited about this.

2011;

Wife: What do you want for your birthday?
Dave: Sock and pants.


2012;

Wife: What do you want for your birthday?
Dave: PwnSocks and UberPants Mk3.

!

 

[Ctuchik]

They said they were going to come down hard on botters in D3 to the point where they would seize the RL assets made from botting.

That's not going to happen. Botters will just sell via private servers, and then Blizzard can't do shit.

 

[BloodOmen]

That's not going to happen. Botters will just sell via private servers, and then Blizzard can't do shit.

No one will buy from private sites tho, why would they? its illegal and they'll charge more money than the AH otherwise its not worth it on their behalf, only a fool would do such a thing.

This is my main point, private sites just won't work people who play the AH can just undercut them every step of the way and there really isnt anything the sites can do about it.

 

[LordjOX]

Why buy items from private, external sites that are possibly insecure and can fraud your credit card details? Its all about trust and credibility, and nothing is more credible and trustworthy to the players than the built-in facilities.

To be fair, if diablo3 holds the same appeal as diablo2 did, then people might actually make back the cost of the game by just casually playing and getting the occasional super-rare drops to sell, until they get bored.

 

[BloodOmen]

Look at it this way Ctuchik

Example #1

Illegal Gold Site 1: Selling Heart of Bobby Kotick for £5
Illegal Gold Site 2: Selling Heart of Bobby Kotick for £4.99
Illegal Gold Site 3: Selling Heart of Bobby Kotick for £4.98

Legitimate Player: Selling Heart of Bobby Kotick for £4.50 (Smart player thats checked these illegal sites to check their prices so he can undercut them)

Who do you think people will buy it off? the illegal websites which is potential a chinese guy thats just stolen a bunch of items off someones account ultimately resulted in you getting banned OR the 100% legit player thats legally selling it ingame?

Example #2

You fancy buying a character (no idea why you would but for the sake of the arguement you want a character bad!)

Illegal Gold Site 1: Selling max level Barbarian with godly gear for £150
Illegal Gold Site 2: Selling max level Barbarian with godly gear for £149.99
Illegal Gold Site 3: Selling max level Barbarian with godly gear for £148

Legitimate Player: Selling max level Barbarian with godly gear for £145 (once again our legit player has outsmarted the illegal sites by undercutting, ho ho ho give him a biscuit)

Now! do you buy it off the illegal websites that could have just stolen the very character from someone and risk losing not only said character but your £150 aswell? OR do you buy it from the Legit player ingame with the added security blizzard offer?

I could go on for hours really, people are crying about the RMAH and obviously don't understand just how it'll impact these illegal sites.

 

[Ctuchik]

It's not illegal, there is no law in any country that i know of that prevents it.

It is against the EULA/COC, but that's not legally binding anywhere.

Secondly, yes if the players undercut they will sell more, but chances are that if the botters can't sell their items, they will find a way to dupe them and sell them for next to nothing.

And to be perfectly honest, i don't think it's gonna be the players market because botters/hackers will dump the prices so much that it's not gonna be worth it for anyone else.

It may work in the beginning, but sooner or later it's gonna cost to much for Blizzard to police this that they will give up.

 

[megadave]

But the illegal sites will probably be the ones run by people with bots, therefore they'll have way more items to sell and can undercut the official shop.


Either way I don't care, I've bought items from websites for D2. I'd much rather spend £3 on a super item that makes my gaming more fun than spend days trying to get it myself.

 

[Ctuchik]

Here's a good explanation why this isn't gonna work as a undercutting tool for players to use against botters.

‪The Mailbox 01/08/11‬‏ - YouTube

 

[Raven]

I just hope they introduce it in WoW. About to hit my first 1 million gold and have no use for it.

 

[megadave]

Here's a good explanation why this isn't gonna work as a undercutting tool for players to use against botters.

‪The Mailbox 01/08/11‬‏ - YouTube

Any summary so we don't have to sit through 18mins of something not very interesting?

 

[Raven]

They take a cut at 3 points in your RL transaction.

Once when you list something
Once when you claim the gold for something
Once when you cash out

Its actually quite funny really. Diablo 3 crossed off the list of games to keep an eye on.

 

[megadave]

from what i've heard it won't be real money anyway, but blizzard money only usable on blizzard products

 

[BloodOmen]

Hmm, TB has some very valid points I hadnt even considered tbh. Total U-turn to it now, listening to what he's just said my lust for diablo iii has just totally died.

 

[BloodOmen]

Some good/bad points

‪Diablo 3's 'Real Money Auction House'‬‏ - YouTube

 

[Ctuchik]

from what i've heard it won't be real money anyway, but blizzard money only usable on blizzard products

And you are going to get those "Blizzard dollars" how exactly?

You are going to have to buy them, with real money. All they do with that is make sure the money stays with THEM.

So with that, we have to pay them to get their virtual currency, we then have to pay them when we want to sell something on the AH, then we have pay them again if it sells and whoever is buying it will ALSO pay a fee. And if that's not bad enough, if it DOESN'T sell you won't get the list fee back even if you cancel the sale.

And if it's gonna work as it does in WoW, the list fee will be a % of what your asking price is. So the more you want for the item the more you have to pay in listing fee.

Blizzard is going to milk this game as much as they possibly can it seems.

Anyone wanna bet that there will also be an "optional" (but really a must have) monthly fee baked in to this game as well?

 

[Helme]

I still think it's a good idea, if I were inclined to sell or buy items for real money I would much rather do it with Blizzard, who has a solid track record of not stealing my credit card information or my account. Something I can't really say for the chinese gold farmers.

Yes, they'll milk the transactions at various points, but I still think the 'safety' is worth it. Something to mention is that there's also a normal auction house, using in game currency so you're not actually forced into doing this for the majority of your purchases, it'll most likely only be the really rare stuff turning up for real life money because of the listing fee.

Also, I believe it goes sell item > get Blizzard $ > can convert it to real $ using 3rd party(PayPal etc.)

Obviously PayPal will grab it's share here as well but... yeah.

 

[pikeh]

Someone provide a link where it says cash made from sales will only be for Bliz products?

 

[BloodOmen]

Its not, you can use it to buy things from the blizzard store/pay game subs with it or siphon it off to your paypal account then to your bank account (not yet confirmed its paypal tho but it will be a website like that)

 

[FuzzyLogic]

Weirdly enough, I don't care about this. I should, but I don't.

More and more games are going down the microtransactions route, another game I'm interested in, Planetside 2, is planned to have a store for non-power enhancing items (allegedly, it's not released yet so that remains to be seen).

Eve has had it for ages and that works, heck, TF2 bases itself on microtransactions now it's free to play.

There's plenty to bitch about and as wrong as it may be perceived to have this model, it works, people are willing to pay for crap. How does the saying go? "A fool and his money are easily parted"?

I have no intention of paying for these things above what I wish to, I'd expect noone else will either. If people want it bad enough they'll probably make use of this system, justifying Blizzards choice.

The game will print money, that much is certain, most of it probably from these microtransactions.

 

[Billargh]

Age of Conan also does it. Now that it's gone free to play, if you're using a free account you have to pay for the likes of character slots/premium classes/special items etc.

 

[Mabs]

 

[Ctuchik]

Age of Conan also does it. Now that it's gone free to play, if you're using a free account you have to pay for the likes of character slots/premium classes/special items etc.

Sure, as does a lot of other F2P MMO'S, D3 is not a MMO.

Therein lies the difference.

They are not even advertising it as a MMO.

tbh, Blizzard is starting to be to big for their own good.

As much as i hate to say it i really want D3 to be an utter flop. (like that's gonna happen)

Blizzard needs a big dose of humble kicked up their arse again so they start to care about the customers again.

/edit: and as Helme is saying, if PayPal is gonna be in on this they will also take a cut.


Will be interesting to calculate just ho badly we will get raped once they release all the info about this.

 

[BloodOmen]

may aswell get used to it because almost every mmo you see from now on will do it, future of gaming as it were.

 

[Billargh]

It does share many similar mechanics to MMO's though.

 

[Ctuchik]

Being similar to an MMO doesn't make it one.

It's not an MMO, simple as that.

Or you could say that because a dog is similar to a horse, it must be a horse.....

See where i'm getting at?