I'm quite sure they will come out with some sort of trade system that will replace the AH. For no other reason than to provide a safe, in game way of trading items to other players.
What I'm shocked about is that they shocked the community with this announcement and then are going to wait to reveal some sort of trade system further down the road. Why wait?
Let everyone digest the world of Diablo 3 without an AH and slowly let folks realize that some sort of safe, efficient trading system is needed and then debut their new idea?
Well, they announced it ahead of time to give everyone a chance to take it in. 6+ months is fine. As for why they didn't announce what they are doing to replace it, they probably don't know yet. And that might depend on feedback from this announcement.
If they want to keep some sort of ingame trade system, they can just aswell keep the AH, cause it is the best system to do so.
With all the complaining on their forums ( And this one ), i can actually imagine them going back to d2 style with only trade chat spam and "hidden" forum trading.
Which is juist 15 years out of date, but nevermind, obviously people still want it *glares at Ruksak*
I don't think they'd go to the step of announcing this in the first place, if they weren't absolutely sure they had an ace up their sleeve.
I agree completely.
They need a system in the game to trade. I think its fair to say that a vast majority of players (whether they wanted to or not) can understand how safe and enjoyable the AH made trading - when you compare trading to the days of D2.
They have to have something - otherwise the chat infrastructure will be overloaded with "TRADDEEZZZZSSSS HERE"
Oh Gods - imagine hearing this shit again: "my item is totally not worth that crap you want to trade - Its worth 5 mempos with crit at least - geez, stop wasting my time."
The AH enabled much needed pricing of items. So you don't have every other player "determining" the price/value of gear out there.
I hope is that they make use of the vendors. Everyone could give up to 5 (or 10, or 12) items to the vendor with a fixed price tag; and then the vendor would display ~12 "random" items for their respective fixed price tags to you.
It would not allow for any search system, but it would offer a way to trade this awesome Manticore that you have no use for because neither you nor your friends play a DH. I think this is close to the idea of a trading post that has been mentioned several times.
Something like that. If they want me to go to D2JSP, the trade channel, or a dodgy 3rd party website, I won't trade ever again. :-)
I hope is that they make use of the vendors. Everyone could give up to 5 (or 10, or 12) items to the vendor with a fixed price tag; and then the vendor would display ~12 "random" items for their respective fixed price tags to you.
It would not allow for any search system, but it would offer a way to trade this awesome Manticore that you have no use for because neither you nor your friends play a DH. I think this is close to the idea of a trading post that has been mentioned several times.
Something like that. If they want me to go to D2JSP, the trade channel, or a dodgy 3rd party website, I won't trade ever again. :-)
Bagstone - you just became my Diablo 3 hero.
I love this idea! It would inspire so much farming, its unreal.
And this is why I feel they have a trade system to replace the AH. The amount of trolling, hacking - the customer service nightmare - that will ensue if they don't is just too great.
It'd be nice if they had an auction house, but instead of showing "auction price" and "buy it now" prices, it just showed a user name or left them anonymous but let you leave them a message with your ID and an offer if they wanted to contact you. So, basically just a hub with all the available items that you could still search for, but no way to actually buy them on the spot, you still had to interact with the person.
And this is why I feel they have a trade system to replace the AH. The amount of trolling, hacking - the customer service nightmare - that will ensue if they don't is just too great.
Yeah I agree with you. Josh said, point blank, that tickets for compromised accounts are significantly higher in regions that don't have the RMAH. They have to understand the value that these systems have in making scamming/hacking such a fringe element and how that generally benefits the playerbase.
I don't plan on trading, or using the AH, or whatever... and I haven't used it in quite a while as it were. But, frankly, I can't see how anyone would want to subject themselves to the BS that was D2 trading. Every other guy I met in D2 was some guy trying to pull a fast one on me. It really was an awful experience in retrospect... and we only put up with it because we had no alternatives.
D3 has proven that there ARE alternatives to allowing trading to be the breeding ground of the scum of the universe.
But... like I said, I don't plan on trading or AHing. I just think this is potentially a mistake because D3 really has no legitemate mechanisms for facilitating trading. It's actually WORSE than D2 was, and I find that concerning.
I think anything that uses gold is bound to fail... it focuses player attention on the wrong thing. The original idea of the GAH was that if you found an awesome item you didn't want, you could trade it for an awesome item you did want.
IMO, a swap-house could work well. You swap one item for one item, so we don't get de-facto currencies like stacks of top-end gems or fistfuls of some arbitrary legendary cough SoJ cough. Offer an item, specify a slot and a collection of stats + ranges, and wait for offers to come in.
I hope is that they make use of the vendors. Everyone could give up to 5 (or 10, or 12) items to the vendor with a fixed price tag; and then the vendor would display ~12 "random" items for their respective fixed price tags to you.
It would not allow for any search system, but it would offer a way to trade this awesome Manticore that you have no use for because neither you nor your friends play a DH. I think this is close to the idea of a trading post that has been mentioned several times.
Something like that. If they want me to go to D2JSP, the trade channel, or a dodgy 3rd party website, I won't trade ever again. :-)
Bagstone - you just became my Diablo 3 hero.
I love this idea! It would inspire so much farming, its unreal.
And this is why I feel they have a trade system to replace the AH. The amount of trolling, hacking - the customer service nightmare - that will ensue if they don't is just too great.
Terrible. Specialy the no searching part.
You selffounders can finally be happy. You ruined the game for the rest of us.
I can understand how you are likely right in that they have some aces up their sleeves, but the prospect of going back to the 90's to trade gear sounds stupid and extreme to say the least. At this very moment, with nothing else proposed or shown, I almost have to take a stance in how ridiculous this proposition alone is... It's stupid shallow dev thinking that associate how much we appreciate or enjoy a game based on a mechanic and not on actual content or gameplay.
My guess as to why they only announced the removal of the AH and RMAH without announcing a replacement. Is that they are planning on slowly releasing info between now and Blizzcon to build up hype and excitement amongst the community which from the responses I've been seeing they are succeeding. Granted given the time frame of the shutdown I'd guess that the release of ROS will be within a month of that date. I am sure they will implement some sort of trade system here that may be part of a panel at Blizzcon.
You selffounders can finally be happy. You ruined the game for the rest of us.
Gratz.
You can't blame the AH removal on the self-found movement.... it's clear that the it was far more effective than Blizzard expected it to be. It was incredible at solving the problems it was intended to solve, but so much so that it introduced problems that tainted the rest of the game.
I don't think this had anything to do with the self-found crowd at all.
I think this had a lot to do with how much gold everyone has and how out of control it is.
Just think about it.
There is an upper ceiling of folks that have billions of gold. They trade at the highest amount of gold because they can and because the items they want cost that much. When new items come into play, those most amazing of amazing items are just going to continue to trade at that level of gold. Thus the same folks buy and trade with the same folks.
Blizz can't introduce enough gold sinks to drain the resources of the rich. They'd cost too much for the average player. So again the rich buy and sell with the rich.
The average player can't play on that level.
The currency of gold is out of control and out of proportion for they, the developers, to be able to do anything about it. So they remove the AH and implement a trading system that deals with a new "currency" and let gold become money to spend on artisans, crafting and repairs.
What that new "currency" is going to be - is anyone's guess.
I think anything that uses gold is bound to fail... it focuses player attention on the wrong thing. The original idea of the GAH was that if you found an awesome item you didn't want, you could trade it for an awesome item you did want.
IMO, a swap-house could work well. You swap one item for one item, so we don't get de-facto currencies like stacks of top-end gems or fistfuls of some arbitrary legendary cough SoJ cough. Offer an item, specify a slot and a collection of stats + ranges, and wait for offers to come in.
Blizz can't introduce enough gold sinks to drain the resources of the rich. They'd cost too much for the average player. So again the rich buy and sell with the rich.
The average player can't play on that level.
The currency of gold is out of control and out of proportion for they, the developers, to be able to do anything about it. So they remove the AH and implement a trading system that deals with a new "currency" and let gold become money to spend on artisans, crafting and repairs.
What that new "currency" is going to be - is anyone's guess.
That will never change, no matter what currency or trading form you use or dont use.
It's the illusion that getting rid of trading possibilities will somehow magically solve these problems that made blizzard get rid of the AH. Too many people didnt think about it properly and whined too much for too long.
They are wrong, but hey, what do they care.
Edit : the actual problem is the distribution and rarity of loot. Which was in place to make the game at least midely challenging for a short while. Which I am fine with, but apparently many people are not. They want the eeasy mode that D2 was just so that they can feel superior with the shiny little sword they found themself.
I dont get a kick out of feeling superior to a piss poor easy game, but hey, to each their own.
What I'm shocked about is that they shocked the community with this announcement and then are going to wait to reveal some sort of trade system further down the road. Why wait?
Let everyone digest the world of Diablo 3 without an AH and slowly let folks realize that some sort of safe, efficient trading system is needed and then debut their new idea?
Thoughts?
Monkalicious: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/OptimusPrime-12194/hero/79139477
With all the complaining on their forums ( And this one ), i can actually imagine them going back to d2 style with only trade chat spam and "hidden" forum trading.
Which is juist 15 years out of date, but nevermind, obviously people still want it *glares at Ruksak*
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
I agree completely.
They need a system in the game to trade. I think its fair to say that a vast majority of players (whether they wanted to or not) can understand how safe and enjoyable the AH made trading - when you compare trading to the days of D2.
They have to have something - otherwise the chat infrastructure will be overloaded with "TRADDEEZZZZSSSS HERE"
Oh Gods - imagine hearing this shit again: "my item is totally not worth that crap you want to trade - Its worth 5 mempos with crit at least - geez, stop wasting my time."
The AH enabled much needed pricing of items. So you don't have every other player "determining" the price/value of gear out there.
They have to have something to replace the AH...
Monkalicious: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/OptimusPrime-12194/hero/79139477
It would not allow for any search system, but it would offer a way to trade this awesome Manticore that you have no use for because neither you nor your friends play a DH. I think this is close to the idea of a trading post that has been mentioned several times.
Something like that. If they want me to go to D2JSP, the trade channel, or a dodgy 3rd party website, I won't trade ever again. :-)
Bagstone - you just became my Diablo 3 hero.
I love this idea! It would inspire so much farming, its unreal.
And this is why I feel they have a trade system to replace the AH. The amount of trolling, hacking - the customer service nightmare - that will ensue if they don't is just too great.
Monkalicious: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/OptimusPrime-12194/hero/79139477
For recurrent revenue, of course they do - cash shop with transmogs and cosmetic items, custom dyes etc...
For trading, I'm not sure.
Top 10 Solo Wizard Leaderboard - North America
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Yeah I agree with you. Josh said, point blank, that tickets for compromised accounts are significantly higher in regions that don't have the RMAH. They have to understand the value that these systems have in making scamming/hacking such a fringe element and how that generally benefits the playerbase.
I don't plan on trading, or using the AH, or whatever... and I haven't used it in quite a while as it were. But, frankly, I can't see how anyone would want to subject themselves to the BS that was D2 trading. Every other guy I met in D2 was some guy trying to pull a fast one on me. It really was an awful experience in retrospect... and we only put up with it because we had no alternatives.
D3 has proven that there ARE alternatives to allowing trading to be the breeding ground of the scum of the universe.
But... like I said, I don't plan on trading or AHing. I just think this is potentially a mistake because D3 really has no legitemate mechanisms for facilitating trading. It's actually WORSE than D2 was, and I find that concerning.
IMO, a swap-house could work well. You swap one item for one item, so we don't get de-facto currencies like stacks of top-end gems or fistfuls of some arbitrary legendary cough SoJ cough. Offer an item, specify a slot and a collection of stats + ranges, and wait for offers to come in.
Terrible. Specialy the no searching part.
You selffounders can finally be happy. You ruined the game for the rest of us.
Gratz.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
You can't blame the AH removal on the self-found movement.... it's clear that the it was far more effective than Blizzard expected it to be. It was incredible at solving the problems it was intended to solve, but so much so that it introduced problems that tainted the rest of the game.
I think this had a lot to do with how much gold everyone has and how out of control it is.
Just think about it.
There is an upper ceiling of folks that have billions of gold. They trade at the highest amount of gold because they can and because the items they want cost that much. When new items come into play, those most amazing of amazing items are just going to continue to trade at that level of gold. Thus the same folks buy and trade with the same folks.
Blizz can't introduce enough gold sinks to drain the resources of the rich. They'd cost too much for the average player. So again the rich buy and sell with the rich.
The average player can't play on that level.
The currency of gold is out of control and out of proportion for they, the developers, to be able to do anything about it. So they remove the AH and implement a trading system that deals with a new "currency" and let gold become money to spend on artisans, crafting and repairs.
What that new "currency" is going to be - is anyone's guess.
I agree with Catalept:
Monkalicious: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/OptimusPrime-12194/hero/79139477
Vendors? Oh yeah... the item-to-gold conversion machines. I love those guys!
That will never change, no matter what currency or trading form you use or dont use.
It's the illusion that getting rid of trading possibilities will somehow magically solve these problems that made blizzard get rid of the AH. Too many people didnt think about it properly and whined too much for too long.
They are wrong, but hey, what do they care.
Edit : the actual problem is the distribution and rarity of loot. Which was in place to make the game at least midely challenging for a short while. Which I am fine with, but apparently many people are not. They want the eeasy mode that D2 was just so that they can feel superior with the shiny little sword they found themself.
I dont get a kick out of feeling superior to a piss poor easy game, but hey, to each their own.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
They don't to introduce anything else.