I don't think it was already discussed. Apology if I'm wrong and if this is old news.
Source: (VP Online Technology Blizzard/Diablo3 from 10:00 to the end)
Robert Bridenbecker
To sum up relative to regions: - Diablo 3 is region free, you have a default region (based on your address) but it can be modified to play in another region (think D2). - You can use every gold-ah - You are restricted (locked) to a specific Real Money AH based on your address when you activate your game - You may move region providing proof of habitation (not 100% sure). - These apply for EU/NA 100% some things may be different for Asia.
It's not said if characters are locked in the region you created them. I would assume they are, otherwise you could transfer items from one RMAH to another and make profit through money exchange and anyway destroy the purpose of locking you to a rmah region.
This is interesting. It certainly prevents the problems of the RMAH being flooded by farmers in China(not sure if that still happens but still a valid concern).
Not at all surprising. Just thinking back now, I know Blizzard has had a particularly difficult time with South Korea when the AH was released and we saw glimpses of troubles in regards to implementation.
If there were cross AH's, there would be chances to create profit based on pricing and currency, unless it was based on a universal currency but even then, there are ways to exploit that. We shall see how things go, I am always interested in how AH's work in games and ways people use them to make the most out of what they got,
On October 29 2011 06:37 Kairos~ wrote: This may be off-topic, but do you need to be a certain age to use the RMAH?
It will most certainly be 18 when there's real money involved. In any case, you need to be 18 to use paypal to transfer money in and out of your blizzard account.
I'm already seeing the dramas associated with kid using mom's credit card. :O
I still have a valid question regarding this topic. I'm not sure how things will play out when you want to use the RMAH in another region. Say your RMAH is US and you play in Europe. Can you use the RMAH and it si the RMAH US for your EU character or you cant ?
Cause if I'm still able to use the US-RMAH while playing on EU and my friend is playing on EU with the EU-RMAH we can then exchange items through our EU characters from one AH to another.
I'm quite mad I had to buy 2 versions of SC2 to play on EU and US (and I'll probably have to buy 2 versions of HotS), so this is nice coming from Blizzard.
I assume if we think of this like D2, in that you can choose something like NA/EU/KR/CN.. That you can play on ANY OF THEM, but the RMAH will be restricted to whatever server you're currently set on. Makes sense to me.
On October 29 2011 11:18 DreamScaR wrote: I assume if we think of this like D2, in that you can choose something like NA/EU/KR/CN.. That you can play on ANY OF THEM, but the RMAH will be restricted to whatever server you're currently set on. Makes sense to me.
Well to be clear they say: The gold AH is set on the region you are playing on, you can therefore access every gold AH. The RMAH though is locked for you, if you play on Europe but are locked in the US you cannot access the European RMAH. You can only access the US RMAH. It's not 100% sure for me though that you can access the US RMAH for your characters in EU while playing on EU.
On October 29 2011 05:53 PraetorialGamer wrote: This is interesting. It certainly prevents the problems of the RMAH being flooded by farmers in China(not sure if that still happens but still a valid concern).
It won't.
So if it's region free but, RMAH is locked to your "address" region. Seems like China farmers can get by just having ONE Main Auction account based in the US. So you have a bunch of Chinese clients playing on the US realm and they just trade the items to the "legit" US account to auction on the RMAH. It also means that they can easily flood the Gold AH with everything and anything and just mule the gold to the "legit" US account to sell that on the RMAH.
Gonna be interesting how this experiment works out.
On October 29 2011 05:53 PraetorialGamer wrote: This is interesting. It certainly prevents the problems of the RMAH being flooded by farmers in China(not sure if that still happens but still a valid concern).
i don't think it will mitigate it, they can use an international contact to purchase the game - thereby locking it in a different region - and access that account from within china?
On October 29 2011 05:53 PraetorialGamer wrote: This is interesting. It certainly prevents the problems of the RMAH being flooded by farmers in China(not sure if that still happens but still a valid concern).
I don't think it solves this problem at all. If anything this is just making the problem more serious.
On October 29 2011 05:53 PraetorialGamer wrote: This is interesting. It certainly prevents the problems of the RMAH being flooded by farmers in China(not sure if that still happens but still a valid concern).
I don't think it solves this problem at all. If anything this is just making the problem more serious.
How could I possibly make it worse?
Sorry, not saying you're wrong, just saying I'm unable to see how you could be right.
This is bullshit. I don't want to participate in Russian RMAH because I'm in Europe. I smell some sort of shitscam. I played D2 on Europe and it was a horrendous experience compare to NA. My desire to play D3 has reduced drastically.
Edit: God damn this infringes free market principles! Protectionist communists! I hate this VP guy.
All these conspiracy theories are funny. The easiest way to explain it is that they lock the RMAH to your region because it gets easier to handle local trading laws that way. For example internet trading in the EU region is probably quite easy but it could get legally problematic if you were to buy something from China.
Blizzard KNOWS that they can't stop trading and gold farming in the first place (people would just buy gold from china like before outside the RMAH) and it's not what they are trying to stop.