Diablo 3

So how do people feel about this new Auction House thing that you can spend gold and real life money on and even sell your gold for real life money?

No pun intended but sounds like selling out. Sony ended up doing similar stuff and it was just stupid.

Yea I'm not really sure what I think of it, on the one hand it should cut the spam bots and sites of ill repute down quite a bit but on the other I'm not sure what I think of it, unless it helps me pay my WoW subscription in which case I think it's a grand idea.

haha yea the only benefit i see is that I basically play wow for free. Other then that I think its kind of dumb idk im thrown off by it

Not really a big surprise, the Kotick-ery continues over at Blizzard.

Attachment 6940

Valdis and I talked about this earlier today.

I do think it will cut down on spam from gold farmers, but the gold farmers (items now too) will be probably 60-70% of the players you will see in game. Damn Chinese will take over the game to sell, sell, sell.

This will be a big turn-off if it does go live in this fashion and might cause ALOT of people to pass on the game.

Blizzard wants a cut of the lucrative black market for their intellectual property (aka "Kotickery") and dressed it up as protecting the customer base from scams (?). This has people with their panties in a bunch?

I don't like this at all. I had just graduated high school when Diablo2 came out. If I was faced with the decision of finding a summer job or attempting to play Diablo2 for cash, it should be pretty obvious that I would have been willing to play an extra 20 hours a week on Diablo2. (I know, I should have invested time in the Mrylokar's BP or Fungi Tunic.. oh well.. Diablo runs are paying the electricity bills!)

There are enough compulsive MMO players. This completely exacerbates the issue. Blizzard/Activision is doing nothing to help people cope with potentially self-destructive behaviors. If I can earn cash while playing the game, suddenly I have something else in my arsenal to throw at my parents as to why this is not a complete waste of time. Blizzard/Activision is not doing themselves any favors by exploiting their consumer's in this manner. Instead, their item store is going to cause a lot of issues for people that don't know how to cope with compulsive behavior.

Monetarily, itemizing over micro-transactions is going to cause a lot more of a political headache than profit. Governmental regulation is going to want to step in and control this spending. It is not going to outweigh exploiting slave labor in China.

If you really want to increase the longevity of the player-base, you need to provide outlets to help people cope with compulsive behaviors. Attempting to design MMO gameplay around players' compulsive behaviors is not going to increase the revenue chain, it is going to destroy it. Keep those Diablo3 players happy with new content - quit exploiting a Horodric cube mechanic to micromanage gem slots...

While I agree some people will not be able to "help" themselves it isn't Blizzards job to be psychologists and parents to those people. While I would agree Blizzard shouldn't do anything to purposely make something that props up compulsive behavior this doesn't do that. It has two purposes that kind of support one another the first being a safe legitimate place for players to buy and sell items for gold or cash as opposed to all the sites out there where to this day you can still buy D2 items and gold. The second is since it's going to happen anyway and there's very little they can do about it, make it easier and simpler by supporting the method to do so and thus earn a cut.

Also I'm not sure if you meant it this way or not, but Blizzard will not be selling any items through the AH, the AH is fully user based.

The slave labor thing is moot since lets face it China will be forcing people to play to sell gold and items anyway.

All that being said I'm still not sure that I like this since I can't see many people wanting to use the gold AH when they could make some real money instead.

With everything that was said they also probably saw how much money dumb little web browser games make and said how can we make money like that? So RL money AH! well at least maybe

Well I think the old school D2 item and gold selling sites showed them how ludicrous people are at spending money on things like that far before the abomination that is Farmville reared it's ugly head.

yea thats true but ever since things like Farmville its gone through the roof.

As long as the items for sale are only for vanity purpose and don't grant any in game advantages, I don't see a problem.

If I have to spend real money to stay competitive in the game, there's an issue. Unless, of course, the game itself is free.

If people wants to spend their hard earned money for in game vanity, who are we to judge? On the other hand, that 900th pair of shoes that you'll only wear once and that awesome new phone that does everything for you, when you don't even make phone calls, are totally a necessity.

Pretty sure you can buy anything, not just vanity stuff. Blizzard said they wouldn't post their own items for sale other than vanity items.

I should've stated that as long as there are no "godly" items that are only obtainable through real money purchases. If I have to pay for the game, I should be able obtain everything by just playing the game.

Also, I'm pretty sure someone else has posted this previously. It's worth noting, again:

Attachment 6945

Well pretty sure Diablo 3 will be like SC2, free to play.

Also as I have said you won't be buying items from Blizzard you will be buying them from players. Blizzard just takes a cut of the sale ala every auction house/site.

Hmm. I see.

Well, Blizzard basically just wants to be the eBay to their own games.

People have been selling Diablo 2 items on eBay forever. I think I made $1000 doing that; that helped pay for some books when I was trying to go to school. :P

Hmm. Does that mean Blizzard will have to issue out income tax documents?

Possibly, but you can't actually get cash from Blizzard. You can create a Blizzard Credit supply, or you can connect it to a PayPal or similar account. In which case PayPal would issue your tax docs.

I would think the IRS expects you to declare your own income for that kind of small stuff. I've only ever sold a totaled car to some dude and the DMV didn't issue me a tax document.

They most likely wont make you fill them out. Its like a casino they expect you to do all your own claiming but once you hit that 10k mark they make you do it