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Sorry, another diablo blog, but today got me thinking. What's the point of having gold now?
I think I'd be safe in saying that 99% of transactions are done through the AH. Trading in person is nearly extinct now and up until now the AH was very accessible, easy to use, and just plain dominated all transactions.
However, now we enter the RMAH era. The RMAH functions in the same way as the AH, except with either real money or blizzard money. All you have to do is set up a paypal, get an authenticator, and go to work. For most people 17 years or older it's not so difficult, and best thing of all, costs you nothing (unless you need to buy the physical authenticator). You don't need to purchase an item before you sell it, if you find a good item you can just sell it right away for real money.
So what am I getting at? Well... what's the point of putting it on the auction house when you can put it up on the RMAH? Money is certainly more enticing than gold, and money can be used to purchase items or gold any time you wish. However, let's look at it the other way. What if you were to sell items for gold? Am I crazy when I say that most of us intend to sell and scrap everything when the game is done? No, we might as well, right? But then look at what happens mathematically. If we wish to sell an item for gold, then sell it AGAIN for real money, we get taxed twice. Once in gold, and once in real money. If we keep all our transactions going through real money, we only get taxed once.
So we have a conundrum. Sure, people still wish to USE gold to make item purchases, but how many people will want to sell for gold? Only when their RMAH slots are full I suppose. Right now, gold and real money are pretty much the same as american dollars and canadian dollars. All you have to do is make the right conversion and you can use it where you please. But let me ask, if you saw one rapidly gaining worth and the other losing worth, which one would you invest in? You're no longer just playing a game. If you use the AH in any form you're playing with real money. So the question remains. Who will use the AH now over the RMAH considering the double tax? If we have a choice between one or the other, why not just choose the safest one that can only inflate in favor of you? Gold prices simply won't rise, I'll tell you that much.
 
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real money supply is limited. you can still profit off gold trades, buy better items, and put them in the real money auction house later
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CAH (Cash Auction, wtf is RM real money? There is no FAKE Money in diablo...)will reduce item costs everywhere since the amount to buy will exceed the rate you can farm it @ equivalent rates, i.e you can spend 8hours farming gold or @ minimum wage for 1 hour of your time buy more than that.
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On June 13 2012 13:24 dRaW wrote:
CAH (Cash Auction, wtf is RM real money? There is no FAKE Money in diablo...)will reduce item costs everywhere since the amount to buy will exceed the rate you can farm it @ equivalent rates, i.e you can spend 8hours farming gold or @ minimum wage for 1 hour of your time buy more than that.
Except no one works 16 hours a day, and for most people this is, read, FUN and just something to do in the off time while able to make more money on the side. I hate all these comparisons when people tell other people they make less than they do at their job playing a god damn video game, or that you somehow ended up losing money when you made back what you spent on the game because of the time you put in. Listen, when you watch a free movie, do you consider that losing money because you weren't at your day job? No.
On June 13 2012 13:09 bowserJr wrote:
real money supply is limited. you can still profit off gold trades, buy better items, and put them in the real money auction house later
I heard the limitation on the blizzard dollars, where you can only have 250 at once. But does that actually apply to the paypal option? If it does, then when does it reset? In fact, i'm nearly 100% sure there isn't a limit on the paypal option, and have heard from friends who have made over 700 dollars just today.
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You could play hardcore, no rmah.....in a weird way, it's a lot of fun. It's also the way the game was supposed to be played..as opposed to constantly dying to kill enemies in later difficulties.
But there are some enemies like the damned server of the lagged. It has vortex,time stop, and also an outright nuke, and it can strike at the worst possible moment.
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I think gold prices will fall to some really cheap value considering the amount of players there are in diablo.
Since the RMAH just got opened and nobody knows the prices to anything, you'll have a lot of people selling for under the market value and people buying over market value. So most of the trades will be in real money. But eventualy the RMAH will stabilize and people will generally know the worth of each item. So the question is why would you ever want gold over real money? Well because of this people will easily see the worth of their items and start flooding the RMAH with a bunch of high tier items. Eventually these items will be over supplied and will start selling at a lower price point. Because of the overabundance in high tiered items, they wont be worth the sell so people will revert back to selling at the gold AH. What this means is only the highest tiered items will be worth money. The rest will be very cheap. Those who are in the market now are only temporarily gaining.
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Where do these rumors of a $250 limit on battle.net balance come from? That is just one maximum value transaction. If that were the case, what would happen when someone went over that limit? Blizz just pockets it? And why would they limit it in the first place? Common sense leaves little room for such a limitation to be real, though I cannot say for certain that it does not exist.
I know for certain that there is no $250 daily/whatever limit on paypal payments from the rmah as I know people who got more than that during the rmah opening bubble this afternoon when things were selling for ridiculous prices.
Back to the OP topic, I too am very curious about what will happen in the diablo 3 economy now. As stated gold is set to keep hyperinflating but now there is a new currency that has a very stable and far more attractive value to sellers. Economic drama is assured.
The achilles heel of the RMAH as a complete replacement for the GAH are the limits on transactions. Most things simply cannot sell for $1.25, and most certainly not once things have calmed down by tomorrow or at least the weekend. The upper limit of $250 is a concern as well for truly insanely good items looking for a spendthrift/rich RMAH buyer.
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I don't see how this system is any different than what ended up happening in D2. People traded mediocre items for high runes and sold godly items for forum gold or real money. I never spent a cent of real money on D2 beyond buying the game and still traded my way to every item I could ever want. I never had absolutely perfect rolls on more than a few things, but those 100% perfect items went for absurd amounts of real money, and if I ever got one I'd probably have sold it.
I guess the only difference is accessibility, it's easier to use the RMAH than a third party website.
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On June 13 2012 14:35 Gheed wrote:
I don't see how this system is any different than what ended up happening in D2. People traded mediocre items for high runes and sold godly items for forum gold or real money. I never spent a cent of real money on D2 beyond buying the game and still traded my way to every item I could ever want. I never had absolutely perfect rolls on more than a few things, but those 100% perfect items went for absurd amounts of real money, and if I ever got one I'd probably have sold it.
I guess the only difference is accessibility, it's easier to use the RMAH than a third party website.
A LOT easier and safer. Not to mention a lot easier to sell for money while most third party websites only sold you the items and not the other way around. It's basically just as easy as using the RMAH after a few minutes of setting it up.
And like people have said, gold will hyper inflate. It would've inflated despite the RMAH, but now because of the fact that simply the currency is being replaced and no one wants to hold onto an inflating currency, it might even drop to near worthless. The only people who find it useful are crafters. For repairs and pots you pick up just as much gold along the way. Then we have another problem. The fact that half or more of all transactions are being done through the RMAH, effectively avoiding any gold tax leads to even more inflation.
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Wonder if Blizzard will curb the rampant botting. Leave your computer running Diablo 3 in the background. Play something actually fun/watch a movie or whatever. Earn the electricity cost back.
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I don't see why you are worried about inflation. Take WoW, where gold is extremely inflated. The only people it hurts are newbies, who find that even the most basic crafting materials are crazily expensive because they are marketed not to low level players, but to max level players who have tons of gold sitting around and are too lazy to get the items themselves. If you're playing D3 now, and you're making gold, what difference does it make how much gold is worth in the future?
What exactly do you intend on buying, anyway? Godly items? Well, those were going to be sold for real money regardless of the RMAH's existence. Crafting materials? There will surely be plenty of those for sale on the gold auction house. Mid level items to get a character going in inferno? There are thousands of those on the AH, and I assure you not every person will list them for $1.25 on the RMAH because few people will be willing to pay $1.25 for an act 1 inferno quality belt.
Your question is whether or not the RMAH willl "kill the AH," and I see no reason why that would occur. Because the only way for that to happen is for every single person to stop using the regular AH, which seems exceedingly unlikely.
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On June 13 2012 15:22 Gheed wrote:
I don't see why you are worried about inflation. Take WoW, where gold is extremely inflated. The only people it hurts are newbies, who find that even the most basic crafting materials are crazily expensive because they are marketed not to low level players, but to max level players who have tons of gold sitting around and are too lazy to get the items themselves. If you're playing D3 now, and you're making gold, what difference does it make how much gold is worth in the future?
What exactly do you intend on buying, anyway? Godly items? Well, those were going to be sold for real money regardless of the RMAH's existence. Crafting materials? There will surely be plenty of those for sale on the gold auction house. Mid level items to get a character going in inferno? There are thousands of those on the AH, and I assure you not every person will list them for $1.25 on the RMAH because few people will be willing to pay $1.25 for an act 1 inferno quality belt.
Your question is whether or not the RMAH willl "kill the AH," and I see no reason why that would occur. Because the only way for that to happen is for every single person to stop using the regular AH, which seems exceedingly unlikely.
I'm not so much worried myself, but it'd basically mean most people would have to get involved in real money whether they want to or not. Psychologically this is quite different from what we had pre RMAH patch, as I don't think everyone considered getting involved. In any case, of course it wouldnt' disappear, but prices using gold would be ridiculously goofy, and gold wouldn't be worth anything, which in itself IS a problem. I think blizzard intended to make a game where gold was in fact worth something, that's what repairs/health pots/crafting gold is there for right?
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On June 13 2012 15:36 Itsmedudeman wrote:Show nested quote +On June 13 2012 15:22 Gheed wrote:
I don't see why you are worried about inflation. Take WoW, where gold is extremely inflated. The only people it hurts are newbies, who find that even the most basic crafting materials are crazily expensive because they are marketed not to low level players, but to max level players who have tons of gold sitting around and are too lazy to get the items themselves. If you're playing D3 now, and you're making gold, what difference does it make how much gold is worth in the future?
What exactly do you intend on buying, anyway? Godly items? Well, those were going to be sold for real money regardless of the RMAH's existence. Crafting materials? There will surely be plenty of those for sale on the gold auction house. Mid level items to get a character going in inferno? There are thousands of those on the AH, and I assure you not every person will list them for $1.25 on the RMAH because few people will be willing to pay $1.25 for an act 1 inferno quality belt.
Your question is whether or not the RMAH willl "kill the AH," and I see no reason why that would occur. Because the only way for that to happen is for every single person to stop using the regular AH, which seems exceedingly unlikely. I'm not so much worried myself, but it'd basically mean most people would have to get involved in real money whether they want to or not. Psychologically this is quite different from what we had pre RMAH patch, as I don't think everyone considered getting involved. In any case, of course it wouldnt' disappear, but prices using gold would be ridiculously goofy, and gold wouldn't be worth anything, which in itself IS a problem. I think blizzard intended to make a game where gold was in fact worth something, that's what repairs/health pots/crafting gold is there for right?
i think i agree with the sentiment that money alters behaviour dramatically, even the thought that selling a piece of equipment for $1 is sufficient for the transition. sell 50 of them and you got your D3 money back already.
i think to avoid the whole collapse of AH is the equilibrium of $/M gold, otherwise there is absolutely no incentive for people to sell on normal AH.
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I think the number of people who are willing to spend $1.25 on something is smaller than the number of people who are willing to spend $50 or more and smaller still than those who don't want to buy anything. By this, I mean most people fall within the category that do not wish to spend any money at all. There are then the people who seek the most powerful items, and are willing to spend exorbitant amounts of real money on them. Lastly, I believe, are those who are willing to spend some, but not much, money fall into the smallest category. And those goods which they could purchase for such small amounts are likely to be not worth buying in the first place, making them functionally the same as those who would spend no money at all.
This is why I feel no particular concern with the RMAH.
Edit: For example, I feel most people who are willing to spend money on virtual items are willing to spend so much that they would not purchase, for example, a good sword, and would instead spend 15 more dollars on an excellent sword. So those who have good swords will find themselves unable to sell them for real money. Because you can't sell things for less than $1.25, there will end up being a glut of cheap items with few to buy them, and those items will eventually find their way back to the gold AH.
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Well, I'm not all too sure about how things will turn out in the end, but assuming gold isn't sought after, eventually those people WILL have to try and get a bit more expensive items, willing to spend real money or not. Sure, they can snag a few good items here and there for gold because they aren't worth selling on the RMAH, but what about when they need those mid tier items worth 500k+ (as people do now)? Are those still going to be on the AH or will they be up for 5 dollars on the RMAH? And even for us non casual gamers. Do we really want to have to use the RMAH to buy items that would normally cost 5-10 mill on the AH today? If it does go down that road, psychologically I don't know if I really want to spend the money because again, like you said, most people didn't want to buy items with real money to begin with.
Also, I'm pretty sure there are still a ton of people willing to spend a few dollars over a couple hundred. I've heard from a lot of friends about people buying mediocre items for 5-15 dollars instantly.
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There will always be people who want to buy a video game once and never pay another cent. I am one of those people.
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Will video kill the radio star?
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EPT
