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.

Comments

Re:Hello IRS

[smelch]

Uh, what?! You mean that an auction house using real money, just like any other auction house using real money on the internet, might actually require people to note the income on their taxes? Quick! Somebody tell everybody who ever used eBay the government is saddling up to ride in on them at dawn! It's about to get real ugly!

Oh, look

[0xdeadbeef]

Blizzard jumped a shark.

Re:Nope, not going to play Diablo 3.

[klocwerk]

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.

The new truism

[sapphire wyvern]

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.

DRM

[c1t1z3nk41n3]

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.

Re:DRM

[Baloroth]

Not sure if he can, but I can: here. Took about 5 secs of Google. From the article:

To play Diablo 3, you'll need a constant internet connection -- it cannot be played offline.

Amusing part: they're trying to spin this as "good" for players: "no longer will you have to worry about leveling up to 30-40, then having to restart from scratch on Battle.net! Everyone who wants to level to 30-40 and never play on battle.net: you can just go fuck yourself." Thats a paraphrase, but you get the idea. BTW, that would be people like me. No interest in online play, would love LAN/ singleplayer. It's OK: I most likely won't have to worry about either the DRM or playing online. Either through not buying the game or... well, use your imagination.

Oh yeah, and rich players can buy more power through this auction house. Next step: items that Blizzard is selling that can only be bought on the auction house. They might not do that: depends if Activision (aka Bobby Kotick) is really letting Blizzard be free to do their thing or not. Blizzard would realize that would ruin the game. Activision just sees the $$$$$$$ they could make, and screw the gamers (more).

Oh yeah, and no modding either, according to that same article.

Re:Nope, not going to play Diablo 3.

[MBGMorden]

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.

Conflict of interest

[traindirector]

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.

Re:Conflict of interest

[traindirector]

If this new trading system isn't executed well, people won't use it.

Blizzard will likely make a good real-money trading system. That's not the issue.

The issue is Blizzard will then have an incentive to design the economy around stimulating real-money trading. So the system of drop frequency and the frequency of adding new items to the game could easily be designed to encourage maximum trading. Even if this is not the plan at the start, it will be a factor in every decision they make with game items or the economy, either overtly or in the back of their minds. It could not be otherwise, because as you said, "The whole point of being in business selling games is to make a profit".

The risk is the economy starts looking more like that of a free-to-play game because the developer has the same motives as a free-to-play developer if they are skimming money from transactions. The next step is the developer selling the rare items for a lot of real-world money to increase profits even more, even though this totally ruins an economy based on scarcity. Then the question is, how much will players tolerate? From Blizzard, I think they will tolerate quite a lot.

I have no interest in playing Diablo III myself--I just hate to see video games increasingly turning from something developed to bring challenge and fun to the player and sold at a one-time cost into something explicitly designed at every step to encourage players to pay for satisfaction within a game that can be turned off permanently at any time the developer chooses.

Re:no offline play = no sale

[TheRaven64]

I bought Diablo II and played it in single player and on a LAN exclusively. I'd probably buy Diablo 3 if I could do the same, but it seems that the game is aimed more at WoW players than people who enjoyed Diablo / Diablo II.

Re:Nope, not going to play Diablo 3.

[Yvan256]

If there's a BFG9000 in Diablo 3 then Blizzard really did screw up the game.

Amazingly bad...

[Beelzebud]

This just went from the game I was most looking forward to, to now it being on my Do Not Buy list....

I'd probably count you in the minorty

[RulerOf]

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.

Re:no offline play = no sale

[TheRaven64]

Mostly these days I play games on a laptop while travelling. If I'm on a train, Internet access is either nonexistent or expensive. If your game requires Internet access, it's either impossible or expensive to use in this environment, so I don't buy it.