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On August 01 2011 09:24 Grettin wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2011 09:18 acker wrote:
...actually, on second thought, real money AH might be a good thing. Or the lesser evil, depending on how you look at it. Will have to wait for release to confirm. Feel free to explain. Im interested to hear your thoughts  I am seeing it bad because it would cause a lot of problems. Possible account hacking, Botting and so on. Of course these are sometimes impossible to avoid but it would just increase it.
Neither Diablo 2 nor World of Warcraft had officially supported RMT features, yet both games had issues with account compromises and item / gold selling.
With the alleged RMT AH, having the average Joe being able to sell their acquired items this will increase the size of the market, which in turn increases supply, automatically lowering demand, and then makes individual profit lower, which means that these systematic farmers will earn less money, thus be less profitable. This hopefully will deter them from succeeding.
EDIT:
I'm not saying Blizzards' own RMT AH will put a stop to compromised accounts, that will always keep happening, but it will make the hacker/farmers profits lower, hopefully to a point where they can focus their time and energy on some other game so we can have a more enjoyable gaming experience.
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On August 01 2011 09:24 Grettin wrote:Feel free to explain. Im interested to hear your thoughts I am seeing it bad because it would cause a lot of problems. Possible account hacking, Botting and so on. Of course these are sometimes impossible to avoid but it would just increase it.
It really depends on how it's implemented.
Some random thoughts...
Let's say that Blizzard puts on a X% tax on transactions in the auction market and forces traded money to be frozen, say, Y days/months on the account in question after a transaction.
Now, I want to look at the Black Market first. For simplicity, let's call this the d2jsp market.
Since users of d2jsp will be drawn off to the Blizzard Market, demand will fall in d2jsp . As long as X isn't ridiculously high, this will cause both price and quantity of goods to decrease proportionally in d2jsp, which will cut into d2jsp's operating costs and render it less profitable (or, more likely, shut it down). This would hurt people who try to save ill-gained money through alternative markets.
If this sounds similar to arguments against Prohibition or illegal marijuana...well, it's pretty much exactly the same argument, except the frozen money part.
Now, imagine that Blizzard bans hackers with Z% probability in any given day. Depending on what Y and Z are,..well, hackers who'd normally launder money through alternative markets could become quite uncompetitive with normal users; frozen money would be a large obstacle for hackers who try to make money on bought accounts as fast as possible before a ban, but only mildly annoying for legitimate, long-term users. The same also applies to botters.
It would also be in Blizzard's best interest to police hackers and botters for obvious reasons. Most notably for financial gain.
Once again, it really depends how Blizzard does this. I suspect that, even without freezing money for Y time, Blizzard could make this game quite bad for illicit financial gain as long as Blizzard takes out sites like d2jsp by making a legitimate market with a relatively low tax. I'm not a professional, and I bet Blizzard's system will be much better than something I can think up in twenty minutes.
As long as no one breaks Blizzard's CDkey generator.
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Holy shit, if the real money AH is true, I'll become a professional D3 player. D-R-E-A-M-J-O-B
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On August 01 2011 09:46 PepperoniPiZZa wrote:
Holy shit, if the real money AH is true, I'll become a professional D3 player. D-R-E-A-M-J-O-B
You'll be competing with China, India, and other developing countries where people can live on twenty dollars a day. Don't count on it.
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I welcome the real-money AH as long as:
1. Blizzard doesn't allowed D3 to be overrun by botters like it is in D2
2. Diablo 3 gold isn't worthless like it is in D2.
3. It always remains player-to-player. Being able to buy items straight from Blizzard would be terrible.
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On August 01 2011 09:48 acker wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2011 09:46 PepperoniPiZZa wrote:
Holy shit, if the real money AH is true, I'll become a professional D3 player. D-R-E-A-M-J-O-B You'll be competing with China, India, and other developing countries. Don't count on it.
I'm pretty sure that there's gonna be a region lock if there's a real money AH. Regional ip bans and stuff.
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Well acker, some great and valid points. let's see how it turns out! 
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Back around when they released Starcraft 2, Blizzard had an interview up that I'm not sure if I can find again at a game review site. It basically said that starting with Diablo 3 they were going to transition to a pay to play format for their games. It would be cool if they implemented this new AH system as it would allow Blizzard to make money in perpetuity in order to support continued reliable patches/support. This sort of change would be in line with their "casual gaming" direction that they seem to be steering Diablo 3 in (where they rely on licensing fees from the Starcraft 2 pro scene) while resisting the monthly fee that was in WOW.
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real money ah is legit.
hello micro transactions.
hello farming d3 for real money
+ Show Spoiler +
oh and they take our bank info attach it to our battle net account and take a % every time we die.
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On August 01 2011 10:03 ePBuckets wrote:real money ah is legit. hello micro transactions. hello farming d3 for real money + Show Spoiler +
oh and they take our bank info attach it to our battle net account and take a % every time we die.
Super Hardcore Mode ><
I want to see what the Hardcore market is going to look like.
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That would be cool if servers were region locked, that would keep the price of buying items/gold higher so i could make more money selling my stuff haha
More people in the US are willing to buy than would in other countries, and fewer would sell.
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I think the RMT is a very good thing. For years people have been making thousands (Sometimes hundreds of thousands) of dollars off selling gold/gear on Blizzard Video games. FINALLY Blizzard will be able to get a cut. I mean, I used to even make money off of boosting peoples arena stats on WoW, I sold 1 of my toons for $900, 1 of my toons for $500, and I sold many. many Diablo 2 accounts on ebay back in the day. I don't like the idea of RMT because it will make getting all the best stuff semi meaningless since you can just buy it...but I know that RMT will happen regardless so Blizz might as well get some profits out of it.
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Or people would just hack US accounts and sell all their items/gold just like they do for World of Warcraft.
That said, didn't this "real world auction house" info come from the fake twitter account? Until blizzard announces something about it officially I suspect we're getting our panties in a bunch for absolutely no reason. If the opposite is true I'm gonna be really disappointed with Blizzard, but there's no way I'm gonna take a stand and miss out on Diablo 3 ^_^
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I like how Risingred put it:
If you can’t beat them (D2JSP), then you can only compete with them by making them irrelevant.
This is Blizzard winning by actively giving up. Assuming the stuff in the thread is true.
Yet there is no other real option to combat people selling things outside of the game. RMT will occur, and it’s best if it happens in a safe and secure environment. Sure, you’re only thinking about the game, but Blizzard has to think about liability, loss of profit, and also the security of people who are using these websites and services.
I share his thought. Diablo 2 already has Real Money Transaction, except they're all happening out of game. There's going to be an outcry over this, but it's really nothing new. It won't impact the game since it was already a 'feature' of the previous game. I also expect the spam to go down in volume since all the accounts are bound to a main account. This can only be good.
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On August 01 2011 10:56 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:
Or people would just hack US accounts and sell all their items/gold just like they do for World of Warcraft.
That said, didn't this "real world auction house" info come from the fake twitter account? Until blizzard announces something about it officially I suspect we're getting our panties in a bunch for absolutely no reason. If the opposite is true I'm gonna be really disappointed with Blizzard, but there's no way I'm gonna take a stand and miss out on Diablo 3 ^_^
Or if you are worried about that you could buy a Blizzard authenticator for $10 and look, once again Blizzard wins.
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I already have one actually, but me having one doesn't save the people who have their WoW accounts hacked. You can get them for free actually so there's really no reason not to have one :p
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The big issue is that blizzard has never been able to stop hacking(e.g. look at SC2/D2, etc) and the existence of a legal infrastructure supporting real currency transfers is a huge incentive to hacking seeing as it directly enhances the efficiency of farming and, therefore, the income you can generate since barriers to entry will be a lot lower.
Black markets might still exists to setup trades such that Blizzard's % cut becomes negligible, so this solution might not even curb these malware-ridden websites at all. The main difference is that people that would otherwise not buy items for cash due to not wanting to deal with shady circumstances will now feel safe enough to go ahead and buy their awesome Windforce for $99.99. Do remember that this game will not have soulbound items, so even high-end legendaries will be sold on this market.
This system doesn't fix any of the aforementioned problems. It actually incentivizes farming and undercutting by professional farmers in third world countries, it will also probably constrict the virtual currency AH with the most valuable items being diverted to the real currency AH, which will, supposedly, generate greater benefits for farmers. This is nothing but an attempt by Blizzard to get a cut of the pie of a very filthy business which has destroyed and plagued a lot of online games.
This being said, if the system is highly and actively moderated things might not be so grim even if morally questionable.
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Your first paragraph doesn't make any sense. No one has ever been able to stop hacking, but it Blizzard has been able to minimize it in recent games. The second part after the comma is not at all self-evident. Indeed, it largely relies on the assumption of the second paragraph; since black markets will continue to exist, the ability to safely launder money will be unhindered, and therefore illegitimate users will be able to exploit lower barriers to entry.
The problem is, your second paragraph would have to assume that black markets will be fixed, held constant, in order to fulfill the following logical step. This is a terrible assumption. Unless, of course, you explain WHY every single person in the black market business, or even a majority of people, would prefer to keep using "malware-ridden websites" over Blizzard's market.
You don't know anything about how Blizzard will implement this. All everyone knows at this point is that people can buy items with real cash on the official auction house. For you to claim "this will happen and I can say why", you would need proof that no one else on the planet outside of Blizzard has. Your rant breaks down there. Because if even some people abandon sites like d2jsp, it becomes some variant of Economics 101, albeit with complications...
There are other problems in your post...like, for instance, the fact that people who would never enter an illegitimate market would enter Blizzard's market helps economies of scale for Blizzard, making illegitimate markets less competitive, which would cause even more problems for your first paragraph. But those problems are minor compared to the assumptions behind the second.
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Was this here already? (sorry if it was)
Chinese site leaked picture of the AH. (take it with grain of salt still)
e: or check http://diablo.incgamers.com/ frontpage.
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I will never believe that Blizzard would implement a gear for money system. I've heard them say sooo many times that would never happen. The closest thing that they would do would be adding microtransactions. For example: Respec for $10, combine gems more easily for $3, repair gear for money, novelty items. No microtransaction should add significant value to a character.
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