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Blizzard Reveals Diablo 3 (Real Money) Auction House
trawg writes "At a special event at Blizzard HQ in California, gaming press were treated to the first look at the Diablo 3 auction house — featuring real-world money transactions across different regions allowing you to buy and sell items with real money. There'll be a listing fee and a sales fee for auctions, and while they're not talking dollar numbers just yet, Blizzard assures gamers that they're not looking to pinch pennies."
Update: 08/01 17:41 GMT by S :The other big piece of news about Diablo 3 is that it will require a persistent connection to Battle.net to play, even for single-player mode. Eurogamer has a detailed write-up about the current state of the beta.
tsia
Oh shit. You just KNOW the IRS will be getting involved here. Anytime you have money moving from person-to-person or business-to-person, the Feds will get their pound of flesh. This could get quite ugly for gamers.
Life is not for the lazy.
Blizzard jumped a shark.
Fuck everything about this...
I kind of have to agree...
I was a hardcore D2 gamer, almost failed out of college because of that game, and I've been looking forward to D3 Very Much.
But real money? No. I play games as an escape from thinking about things like my bank account.
Bliz, please rethink this.
Let a real money secondary economy evolve, but for the love of Pete don't enshrine it in the game.
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
If you can't beat 'em, monetise 'em.
I guess in principle it's probably not _all_ that evil.
Still, it makes me think the gameplay experience will be like a Free To Play game... but with a $60 USD (or $90 AUD, grrrr) barrier to entry.
So, Blizzard doesn't allow Real Money Trading in WoW, but is going to set up a system in Diablo 3 for that?
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Let a real money secondary economy evolve, but for the love of Pete don't enshrine it in the game.
Why? This means that you are less likely to get ripped off since Blizzard will be running it versus the third party sites where you are most likely getting scammed from. Why would you think the second choice is better?
Actually, it will eliminate a lot of that spam, since if you're looking for something, you have a singular, searchable place to go find it. Unfortunately, it will be replaced by "Yo yo, check out my auction for 4 2 soc 2 skill 20 fcr barb circlet". On the plus side, thousands of Chinese teenagers are about to get new jobs.
More news to come out is their decision to mirror Ubisoft with an always online requirement. Players will require a Battle.net connection even to play single player. I certainly won't be purchasing it, and it seems that most of my friends won't either. Too much DRM and no LAN play make it a poor investment.
Realistically lack of LAN play in today's market will only upset geeks, and only a very small subset of them. Battle.NET DRM is indeed annoying in it's own way, but it's also kind of cool - namely in that Blizzard will let you redownload all your games at will. I managed to find my Warcraft III jewel case in a drawer - no clue where the CD is, but it had the CD-key on the case. I logged into my Battle.NET account, registered that game, and poof. Instantly download ability. That's a benefit that I can live with a few negatives to get.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
It just lets Blizzard get that percentage rather than an outside company. And why shouldn't they? These people are going to do it one way or another. Why not integrate it into the game?
The general argument is that then Blizzard has a conflict of interest: will future additions and changes to the game focus on increasing fun, or will they focus on increasing transaction profit?
It's easy for any person or organization to say "this is just something on the side and we will always focus on our core intent rather than generating extra profit". This is much harder to do in reality.
It's much easier to restrain oneself from entering a situation with a conflict of interest than getting involved and making questionable choices, perhaps without knowing you are making a tradeoff.
Why? This means that you are less likely to get ripped off since Blizzard will be running it versus the third party sites where you are most likely getting scammed from. Why would you think the second choice is better?
Frankly because I don't care if people doing an explicitly forbidden activity get ripped off.
Wrapping it into the game likely means that all the best items will get put in the cash auction house, and the in-game-gold AH will only have lesser items.
I'd love a separate server (cluster) for those who wanted to play in the real money economy.
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
Because the guy who finds the BFG9000 he doesn't need/want is ALWAYS going to put it on the cash market, not the in-game one.
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
If there's a BFG9000 in Diablo 3 then Blizzard really did screw up the game.
Keep it up. Before the US dollar was the world's reserve, it was the British pound. Look how well that worked out for them. Currencies come, and currencies go. But actually paying for your imports for a change instead of just printing up money for them is going to be a real bitch for you. I can't wait to see how that works out.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This just went from the game I was most looking forward to, to now it being on my Do Not Buy list....
Except it's not clear why you can't have the best of both worlds. Being perpetually connected and being able to download games with just a CD-Key are not mutually dependent.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
I bought Diablo II and played it in single player and on a LAN exclusively.
My friends and I did the same, at least initially, but once I got onto Battle.net, I played online exclusively. The rest of them did the same once they got internet access at home.
One of them did something I thought very odd, though. He played on Battle.net, but only ever by himself. He didn't trade items, either. I couldn't fathom why anyone would do that, considering the palpable negative effects the added latency and the occasional full-on desync had on the game itself.
[nostalgia]
To this day, I really, really miss hacking that game. I hereby give a shout out to anyone who recognizes these names or hacks: Herzog Zwei, Thohell, Very_Superior (though a jerk he mostly was), BootyJu1ce, EvilCheese (very, very brilliant hacker), Oxide (who I was told was a twerp), the Chest Hack (0x44, how we hardly knew ye), "The Matrix" (and anyone who liked the Ith War Pike I made on USEast), and (quite possibly the funniest exploit ever) Imbue Scanning.
[/nostalgia]
That game made me loathe dialup internet.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
So I write code for Diablo 3. I find, while looking at the source code, an exploit. I give this information to my wife/child/best friend who then uses it to gain an advantage in gaining real cash. I don't fix it. I still do my job, I still fix every bug Q&A finds, I still give great input into the hard technical decisions. I just don't fix this one exploit I found. Even if I am caught the best they could claim is incompetence.
Evil, possibly, but I am a developer and an atheist. I offset my personal moral compass by knowing that they are underpaying me for my brilliance and contribution. The CTO has a yacht and a Ferrari for goodness sake.
The risk/reward relationship between getting fired and doing something unethical but monetarily beneficial will be more skewed toward unethical behavior because of this decision. They are now dealing with money and all the security concerns that come with it, whether they like it or admit it or not.
I'm *only* interested in single-player and LAN play for D3. I have absolute zero interest in playing any game online with strangers. These announcements are throwing me very strongly from my original plan to purchase two copies of D3 - yes, purchase, at retail - and the player's guide, immediately upon release. Now I'm thinking I would be much, much better off to wait a few weeks (days? hours?) and download the cracked-for-offline-play version, or just not bothering at all. Blizzard is going from getting around $150 from me upon D3's release to getting a goose egg.
The killers here are the lack of LAN play, the 10-character limit (which is absolutely mindblowing - can I at least delete them and rotate, or do Activision's beancounters expect me to buy another copy of D3 if I want to replay with different skill builds for an 11th time?), and the always-connected requirement. None of those are acceptable. They aren't even up for discussion for me.
I don't care at all about the auction house, because I don't play online, so I'm not concerned with keeping up with the latest 'leet loot all the twelve-year-olds have. See how it all comes in a circle?
Blizzard, it's not too late. One of your own VPs is explicitly telling me not to buy this game. "I want to play Diablo 3 on my laptop in a plane, but, well, there are other games to play for times like that", indeed. There are lots of other games. I wanted to play this one, but you don't want me (or anyone else in my family - I'm the head of a household full of game geeks) to do so.
-Zirbert
...so you mean i can profit with /real/ money off the laziness of other players now? Count me in.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
If my past 5 years of playing WoW have taught me anything, it's that Blizzard is all too eager to cave to customer demands. It will only take a small percentage of customers dissenting to get both of these (shitty shitty shitty) ideas scrapped.
I'm all too happy to pay Blizzard $15 a month for WoW, as I feel it offers me good value. I would be all too happy to pay for D3 when it launches too, because I trust that it will be a good game. However if they do happen to keep the persistent connection bullshit intact, I will be all too happy to find one of those nifty offline cracks that emulates a BNet server on my local machine so I can play the game I legally acquired on my terms, not theirs.
Cool post bro, highfive \o