It was glaringly obvious from the very beginning that the RMAH, which legalized buying items and gold for real money, would destroy Diablo 3 and that it would make the game pointless. Yet Blizzard and the RMAH defenders, who have now proven to be utterly and irrefutably wrong, supported the RMAH by desperately clinging to debunked arguments, even as it was clear that the RMAH was ruining the game.
Many other people, including me, explained that they were wrong, but Blizzard and the RMAH defenders were too dense and arrogant to listen to reason.
Let's look at some of the totally WRONG arguments they wrote.
First, they said that the RMAH was made to combat third party sites by legalizing the buying of items for real money, which people were going to do anyway.
Blizzard:
Acquiring items has always been an important part of the Diablo series, but the previous games have not had a robust, centralized system for facilitating trades, and as a result players have turned to inconvenient and potentially unsafe alternatives, such as third-party real-money-trading organizations. Many of the transactions between players and these organizations led to a poor player experience and countless customer-service issues involving scams and item/account theft, to name a few. To that end, we wanted to create a convenient, powerful, and fully integrated tool to meet the demand of players who wished to purchase or sell items for real-world currency, and who would likely have turned to a less-secure third-party service for this convenience.
tired of ppl crying about the ah. would you rather that ppl still bought crap off of chinise farmers? it was gonna happen weather bliz added in the ah or not. you dont like it then dont use it, pretty simple.
Welcome to capitalism? I mean I'm serious, trading money for time and vice versa is completely standard in almost all aspects of life.
It makes sense it would transfer into gaming as well.
People are always going to do this. If you're rich enough you won't care about its legality. It makes sense for game makers to legalize it, remove the scamming aspect, take a 5% profit from it, and destroy all the gold selling sites by making their service better.
WRONG. Destroy the gold selling sites? What the RMAH accomplished was destroying the game. Of course, I told them that the notion that Blizzard should allow players to buy items for real money by legalizing and facilitating it because players were going to do it anyway is stupid because their dumb argument would imply that Blizzard should allow players to buy bots for real money by legalizing and facilitating it:
Blizzard should sell honor farming bots.
People clearly want honor farming bots considering how popular they are.
And they can make a buck by selling them, instead of forcing players to go through shady 3rd party sites to get their hands on these bots.
WRONG. Even Blizzard has now rejected this completely wrong argument.
When we initially designed and implemented the auction houses, the driving goal was to provide a convenient and secure system for trades. But as we've mentioned on different occasions, it became increasingly clear that despite the benefits of the AH system and the fact that many players around the world use it, it ultimately undermines Diablo's core game play
And even I told them that this argument, that the RMAH doesn't affect you if you don't use it, is completely bogus because the RMAH makes the whole game, all of it, pointless:
I've never played D3 and never will.
I don't get what's so hard to understand. Consider the following 2 questions: 1. Why play D3? 2. If I play D3, can I just ignore the RMAH?
In order to ask question 2, you must first ask question 1. The answer to question 1 is, there is no reason to play D3. The game is pointless. Therefore, question 2 is moot and irrelevant. Question 2 doesn't matter, because there's no reason to play in the first place.
To see why the answer to question 1 is that the game is pointless, consider what the point of D3 ultimately is. To make a character with good gear? Why bother, you can just buy the best gear with real money. To farm for good gear? Why bother, you can just buy it for real money. To collect good gear? Again, anyone can buy the best gear for real money. To kill Inferno Diablo without using the RMAH? Why? What is the point of gear? Is the point of the game to beat people in PvP? There's no PvP, but if there was, again people who buy the best gear would win. Every possible reason to play D3 is defeated by the point that anyone can buy the best gear off the RMAH. Therefore, there's no reason to play the game in the first place, and hence no reason to ask question 2. The game is pointless, it would be a waste of my time to play such a pointless game, so I don't.
Then they said that the game won't be destroyed. We should just trust them on that?
Legendaîry (yet again):
Most the people whining here won't buy it when it first comes out. But a few months later they'll pick it up (hypocrites that they are) when they see that all their predictions about the AH destroying the game was just them being Chicken Little.
I realize there's going to be some assumptions that this is sky is falling/slippery slope, as always, but a real money auction house is something we think will work for Diablo III because of the way the item systems work.
WRONG, again. It destroyed the game so badly that now even Blizzard has admitted their mistake and flipped-flop on the RMAH in an attempt to fix their mess. The RMAH has proven to be a catastrophic screw up of epic proportions, the most idiotic and foolish game design decision that Blizzard has ever made:
I didn't buy D3 only because of the RMAH. And I won't ever buy it because of the RMAH.
There is no point in playing the game because of the RMAH.
Why play? To make the best character? All you need to do is to buy the best available items off the RMAH. To collect the best gear? You can just buy it off the RMAH. To trade with others? The only trading is buying things off the AH. To PvP? The best way to successfully PvP is to buy the best items off the RMAH.
Every reason to play the game is killed by the RMAH. There's no point in playing.
And I don't play pointless games.
Can anyone give me one single reason to play D3 with the RMAH?
Even the Korean government agreed with me by banning the RMAH and banning the sale of all in-game items, citing the main reason why I hated the RMAH:
In your face, Blizzard.
Korea is going to ban selling in-game items for real money and botting, with a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison. And the reason they've cited for this -- the reason I used to argue against the RMAH in D3 -- games are not real life, games are for fun.
Selling items for real money destroys fairness in the game. They even mentioned that this was done because it was unhealthy for gaming culture.
Korea has decided to ban trade for commercial game items from the second half of this year as a measure aimed at encouraging students to not waste time.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has announced that it is planning to halt all virtual item trades with a new law, to be announced sometime next month.
“The main purpose of the games is for entertainment and should be used for academic and other good purposes,” said Kim Kap-soo, head of the ministry’s content policy division, Wednesday.
The government official also stressed item collecting for commercial use is a serious hindrance to creating a healthy game culture. [...]
With the removal of the RMAH, Blizzard and the defenders of the RMAH have been proven to be wrong about everything on the RMAH and its effect on the game. They have no creditability left. Their wrongness destroyed the game.
If only Blizzard did not listen to these stupid and debunked arguments, Diablo 3 wouldn't have been so bad, received so much backlash, and be so completely pointless, as it has been since launch.
With the removal of the RMAH, Diablo is once again a game where buying items for real money is not legalized, where rich people cannot buy the best items for real money without risking a ban for violating the rules, just because they're rich enough to spend the money. The game is now more fair.
which legalized buying items and gold for real money
It always has been, and remains perfectly legal to buy and sell in game items and gold for real money, you can still do so without risk of arrest or getting a criminal record.
Fun fact: OP never bought Diablo 3 while the AH/RMAH was in the game. He admitted as much in his thread (which was, more or less, this same thread) on MMO-Champion. Of course, everyone there pointed out how stupid his thread was and how the AH/RMAH wasn't the problem (it was the loot system, as has already been pointed out here) and the thread was closed. I imagine the same will happen here.
So, the OP is speaking with a complete lack of understanding and experience since he, you know, never even owned the game. Good job, OP, you sure told Blizzard!
Of course, the OP is the kind of person that can have his argument picked apart on one forum and repost it on another forum, so no amount of words here will get to him. This thread doesn't need to exist since it's a straightforward Blizzard bashing thread. Can we have it closed, please?
So the past few days I have had some down time and decided to browse this forum and MMO-Champ more than usual. And this has to be at least the fifth thread by this guy on the RMAH. And as stated above, he never even owned the game....
OP: You really gotta relax, how many threads have you successfully forced mods into locking? I was not the biggest fan of the RMAH myself either, but this is kinda overkill.
Don't see a problem with his post. He was against rmah for a while, and I'm sure he got flamed hard for 2 years if he was fighting that fight. He is pretty much saying FU to the people who flamed him.
If he didn't buy the game, he voted with his wallet. He could have played beta, demo, or go over a friend's house to check out his game.
At the end, rmah drained the life out of this game. And did more harm then good. Guy just wants to vent a little bc he got flamed hard for it.
Every person had different gripes with the game. Some had problems with the lack of skill points, some had problems with the bad loot, some had problems with bad legendaries, some had problems with lack of PvP...
Putting it all in one basket and saying "this ruined the game" is a bit short-sighted imo. The RMAH I am willing to bet that 80%+ of the real-money transactions in D3 happened through the RMAH, but that's just my own estimate. That's not important though.
What is important is that the RMAH didn't precisely harm the game by itself. The "pay 2 win" (win what, again? I consider myself a winner at D3) aspect was always there, since D2. It didn't
I don't disagree with you that the RMAH brought some problems. But again, the know-it-all aggressive attitude won't get many people on your side. Because to some, the RMAH wasn't a problem at all. Recognizing that, and understanding that different people have different issues with the game is the first step to not become tunnel-visioned about this kind of thing.
As a dev, focusing all your efforts in one problem, and one that might not even be the root of the issues with the game, and you're bound to break your game even further.
the game was designed arround the AH and i dont speak of the RMAH only but about gold AH too. That destroyed the fun in playing diablo III. If the game had loot as in 2.0 then the AH would not be such an issue i guess. Ive played over 300 hours and i dont remember finding any cool items in that time.... What do you do if you cant find any usefull items? You go to the AH and buy some... The game was designed arround the AH, blizz wanted to make money from the fee on RMAH.
Now with the removal of AH and making items bound to account the game is on a good track again. The 2nd expansion should make the game even better since with Josh as game designer theyr making only good decisions.
Now only give us ladders/seasons and many players will be happy
If you're going to allow more liberal trading rules, you might as well have a RMAH. Because with trading comes 3rd party sites and real money trades. If you have a 1st party RMAH, then you (e.g. Blizzard) get to profit from it, monitor it's rate of use in your game (and balance according), and reduce the amount of account hacks you have to deal with.
Right now, Blizzard wants the only way you acquire legendary gear to be directly based on playing the game. Which is why you can only trade with people you played with and no clan trading. I like the fact that the number of legendaries (good, bad, or mediocre) you possess is proportional to the amount of time you played. As long as Blizzard favors this philosophy, I don't see AHs coming back or BoA going away. However, Blizzards philosophies do evolve over time so never say never.
The old loot system would not have existed without the AH though. The Ah was _the_ reason drops were so crappy.
Drop rates, yes.
The itemization being jacked up had very little to do with the existence of an AH, though. 1.x would have been a lot more enjoyable experience if self-found was viable, but Blizzard continues to insist that drop rates have to be balanced around trading (which is their #1 justification for BoA). To me this means they don't understand what the primary problem with 1.x was and *why* people were flocking to the AH in droves.
Tying drop rates to the presence of trading (or the lack thereof) is the general design philosophy that didn't work in 1.x and, yet, that's basically what they're doing in 2.x. "No trading means we can increase drop rates!" OK... right. But you could have tried to increase drop rates without removing trading and see how that works when there is no AH and all "transactions" need to be bartered and are item-for-item instead of item-for-lump-of-gold.
In reality the primary issue with the AH was it was too convenient and it didn't require you to have something of value to me (and vice-versa) since gold was universally-valued. If I found an item that you didn't want, I'd just sell it to someone else and then use that gold to buy your item. If, instead, we had to go item-for-item... suddenly it's nowhere near as easy to find a trade... and instead of going on to Amazon.com (the AH) to buy your item it's more like you have to go to a swap meet, walk around, see everything, and then haggle with the owner.
That being said, the RMAH didn't "destroy" anything because they certainly didn't balance drop rates around the RMAH. Drop rates were balanced around the GAH since that was the one that they figured everyone would use. The RMAH was just a method by which they took $$$ away from 3rd party sites.
The accessibility definitely made the RMAH more popular than D2JSP but, frankly, I'm sick of people who know no self-control whining that Blizzard needs to put in limits so that they don't ruin things for themselves. I'm sick of things that I enjoy going the way of the dodo bird because other people will use the AH 24/7 even though they hate it because they need to have the absolute best gear and then blame Blizzard.... as if Blizzard ever really intended for people to sit in the AH screen all day every day. It's just a lack of responsibility and ownership of your own decisions at that point.
The old loot system would not have existed without the AH though. The Ah was _the_ reason drops were so crappy.
Drop rates, yes.
The itemization being jacked up had very little to do with the existence of an AH, though. 1.x would have been a lot more enjoyable experience if self-found was viable, but Blizzard continues to insist that drop rates have to be balanced around trading (which is their #1 justification for BoA). To me this means they don't understand what the primary problem with 1.x was and *why* people were flocking to the AH in droves.
Tying drop rates to the presence of trading (or the lack thereof) is the general design philosophy that didn't work in 1.x and, yet, that's basically what they're doing in 2.x. "No trading means we can increase drop rates!" OK... right. But you could have tried to increase drop rates without removing trading and see how that works when there is no AH and all "transactions" need to be bartered and are item-for-item instead of item-for-lump-of-gold.
In reality the primary issue with the AH was it was too convenient and it didn't require you to have something of value to me (and vice-versa) since gold was universally-valued. If I found an item that you didn't want, I'd just sell it to someone else and then use that gold to buy your item. If, instead, we had to go item-for-item... suddenly it's nowhere near as easy to find a trade... and instead of going on to Amazon.com (the AH) to buy your item it's more like you have to go to a swap meet, walk around, see everything, and then haggle with the owner.
That being said, the RMAH didn't "destroy" anything because they certainly didn't balance drop rates around the RMAH. Drop rates were balanced around the GAH since that was the one that they figured everyone would use. The RMAH was just a method by which they took $$$ away from 3rd party sites.
The accessibility definitely made the RMAH more popular than D2JSP but, frankly, I'm sick of people who know no self-control whining that Blizzard needs to put in limits so that they don't ruin things for themselves. I'm sick of things that I enjoy going the way of the dodo bird because other people will use the AH 24/7 even though they hate it because they need to have the absolute best gear and then blame Blizzard.... as if Blizzard ever really intended for people to sit in the AH screen all day every day. It's just a lack of responsibility and ownership of your own decisions at that point.
True. Whether or not there is an AH or trading, they needed to fixed itemization. The fact that almost any weapon not called "Echoing Fury", "Skorn", or "Manitcore" was utter crap compared to even a mediocre rolled EF/Skorn/Manticore was a huge problem. The reduced emphasis on trifecta gear has helped make more stuff viable. But I'm worried gear is still too cookie cutter assuming you actually get the pieces you want to drop. In many ways, I pick my spec based on what drops not the other way around. I'm having lots of fun now but I do wonder how that will hold up in the future.
But that would not prevent sites like D2JSP from selling items for cash, and I'm sure they were thinking of that.Of course, it seems like they're gimping rares atm for fear of the same.
I'm more than a little startled that it's this important to you that you might have been right about an issue in a VIDEO GAME two years ago. Like ... You actually went and found ancient quotes about it, dug up old posts, found links and put together this giant wall of text about how you're right about the RMAH.
Wonderful, you were correct, I was correct too but I don't care nearly as much? I thought it was a bad idea, they disagreed, that's okay. It's okay if people disagree with us. I'm personally glad that Blizzard experimented with the RMAH. It didn't work the way they wanted it to, it worked about how I expected it to. *shrug*
So... this is just an "I told you so," loosely arranged into what appears to be some kind of argument, but lacking any critical evidence/support? All those quotations just seem to be calling people out for no reason, and a lot of them don't really follow, argument-wise. The RMAH is down. Go play the game you ranted for (but apparently only recently bought).
Finally, please work on the following: 1) coming up with a GOOD reason to argue for/against something next time, like trying to affect change; 2) presenting logical arguments with reasonable evidence from trusted sources.
For what it's worth, I personally never liked the RMAH and never used it, but this anti-RMAH trolling after the fact is just ridiculous.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
i would choose my own religion and worship my own spirit, but if he ever preached to me i wouldn't want to hear it. i'd drop him, a forgotten god, languishing in shame; and then if i hit stormy seas, i'd have myself to blame.
So let me see if I have the right of this... You went through the trouble of digging up posts and writing up this huge diatribe because you knew that the AH was a terrible idea from the start? And you want us to do what? Give you a cookie? Pat you on the back? Validate your existence? Allow me to clue you in on something... that whole "this is a terrible idea" thing you're so proud of? Everyone else knew it too.Except, apparently, for Jay "We'll Look Into This" Wilson. Congrats, you're smarter than the dude who ruined Diablo. Move on.
Wonderful, you were correct, I was correct too but I don't care nearly as much? I thought it was a bad idea, they disagreed, that's okay. It's okay if people disagree with us. I'm personally glad that Blizzard experimented with the RMAH. It didn't work the way they wanted it to, it worked about how I expected it to. *shrug*
For what it's worth, I personally never liked the RMAH and never used it, but this anti-RMAH trolling after the fact is just ridiculous.
Both of these statements are really important IMO.
Too much of the "feedback" about D3 has turned to people ranting and raving that the game isn't 100% customized to their wants and needs. It's ridiculous. What's really upsetting is that no game in the history of games has ever been perfect in that regard, but that didn't stop any of us from enjoying any of them.
FF8 wasn't as good as FF7 - they tried some new things and they didn't work - but it was still a damned fun game that was well worth the purchase price. Have we really gotten to the level that anything short of complete perfection (evaluated on a person-by-person basis) has to be trolled to hell and back for being a failure? Is that the general attitude that the internet has enabled?
1. This isn't some "after the fact" rationalization which Zhaph claims it is. The quotes were from before when Blizzard decided to remove the RMAH, and some were from even before launch.
2. Medea294 is incorrect to say that everyone knew the RMAH was a bad idea except Jay Wilson. In fact, many people defended the RMAH and some of those people are quoted in the OP.
3. As for me not buying the game. That doesn't mean I don't know what's happening in the game. I still read and watch news. I didn't buy the game because of the RMAH. I would be a hypocrite if I did buy it. I didn't even buy the game when they announced the RMAH was being removed, I only bought it yesterday, AFTER it was removed for real.
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The RMAH has been removed.
It was glaringly obvious from the very beginning that the RMAH, which legalized buying items and gold for real money, would destroy Diablo 3 and that it would make the game pointless. Yet Blizzard and the RMAH defenders, who have now proven to be utterly and irrefutably wrong, supported the RMAH by desperately clinging to debunked arguments, even as it was clear that the RMAH was ruining the game.
Many other people, including me, explained that they were wrong, but Blizzard and the RMAH defenders were too dense and arrogant to listen to reason.
Let's look at some of the totally WRONG arguments they wrote.
First, they said that the RMAH was made to combat third party sites by legalizing the buying of items for real money, which people were going to do anyway.
Blizzard:
L0ckless:
paroxysm2010:
dcemuser:
WRONG. Destroy the gold selling sites? What the RMAH accomplished was destroying the game. Of course, I told them that the notion that Blizzard should allow players to buy items for real money by legalizing and facilitating it because players were going to do it anyway is stupid because their dumb argument would imply that Blizzard should allow players to buy bots for real money by legalizing and facilitating it:
How did Blizzard and the RMAH defenders respond? They couldn't. They were not smart enough to think of a response. They had no response at all.
Legendaîry:
Next, they used the argument that it won't affect you if you don't use it.
Analysis:
WRONG. Even Blizzard has now rejected this completely wrong argument.
And even I told them that this argument, that the RMAH doesn't affect you if you don't use it, is completely bogus because the RMAH makes the whole game, all of it, pointless:
Then they said that the game won't be destroyed. We should just trust them on that?
Legendaîry (yet again):
Bashiok:
Herrow:
WRONG, again. It destroyed the game so badly that now even Blizzard has admitted their mistake and flipped-flop on the RMAH in an attempt to fix their mess. The RMAH has proven to be a catastrophic screw up of epic proportions, the most idiotic and foolish game design decision that Blizzard has ever made:
Even the Korean government agreed with me by banning the RMAH and banning the sale of all in-game items, citing the main reason why I hated the RMAH:
With the removal of the RMAH, Blizzard and the defenders of the RMAH have been proven to be wrong about everything on the RMAH and its effect on the game. They have no creditability left. Their wrongness destroyed the game.
If only Blizzard did not listen to these stupid and debunked arguments, Diablo 3 wouldn't have been so bad, received so much backlash, and be so completely pointless, as it has been since launch.
With the removal of the RMAH, Diablo is once again a game where buying items for real money is not legalized, where rich people cannot buy the best items for real money without risking a ban for violating the rules, just because they're rich enough to spend the money. The game is now more fair.
Equality of opportunity is restored.
Diablo 3 can look forward to a better future.
It always has been, and remains perfectly legal to buy and sell in game items and gold for real money, you can still do so without risk of arrest or getting a criminal record.
So, the OP is speaking with a complete lack of understanding and experience since he, you know, never even owned the game. Good job, OP, you sure told Blizzard!
Of course, the OP is the kind of person that can have his argument picked apart on one forum and repost it on another forum, so no amount of words here will get to him. This thread doesn't need to exist since it's a straightforward Blizzard bashing thread. Can we have it closed, please?
OP: You really gotta relax, how many threads have you successfully forced mods into locking? I was not the biggest fan of the RMAH myself either, but this is kinda overkill.
If he didn't buy the game, he voted with his wallet. He could have played beta, demo, or go over a friend's house to check out his game.
At the end, rmah drained the life out of this game. And did more harm then good. Guy just wants to vent a little bc he got flamed hard for it.
Putting it all in one basket and saying "this ruined the game" is a bit short-sighted imo. The RMAH
I am willing to bet that 80%+ of the real-money transactions in D3 happened through the RMAH, but that's just my own estimate. That's not important though.
What is important is that the RMAH didn't precisely harm the game by itself. The "pay 2 win" (win what, again? I consider myself a winner at D3) aspect was always there, since D2. It didn't
I don't disagree with you that the RMAH brought some problems. But again, the know-it-all aggressive attitude won't get many people on your side. Because to some, the RMAH wasn't a problem at all. Recognizing that, and understanding that different people have different issues with the game is the first step to not become tunnel-visioned about this kind of thing.
As a dev, focusing all your efforts in one problem, and one that might not even be the root of the issues with the game, and you're bound to break your game even further.
Now with the removal of AH and making items bound to account the game is on a good track again. The 2nd expansion should make the game even better since with Josh as game designer theyr making only good decisions.
Now only give us ladders/seasons and many players will be happy
Right now, Blizzard wants the only way you acquire legendary gear to be directly based on playing the game. Which is why you can only trade with people you played with and no clan trading. I like the fact that the number of legendaries (good, bad, or mediocre) you possess is proportional to the amount of time you played. As long as Blizzard favors this philosophy, I don't see AHs coming back or BoA going away. However, Blizzards philosophies do evolve over time so never say never.
The itemization being jacked up had very little to do with the existence of an AH, though. 1.x would have been a lot more enjoyable experience if self-found was viable, but Blizzard continues to insist that drop rates have to be balanced around trading (which is their #1 justification for BoA). To me this means they don't understand what the primary problem with 1.x was and *why* people were flocking to the AH in droves.
Tying drop rates to the presence of trading (or the lack thereof) is the general design philosophy that didn't work in 1.x and, yet, that's basically what they're doing in 2.x. "No trading means we can increase drop rates!" OK... right. But you could have tried to increase drop rates without removing trading and see how that works when there is no AH and all "transactions" need to be bartered and are item-for-item instead of item-for-lump-of-gold.
In reality the primary issue with the AH was it was too convenient and it didn't require you to have something of value to me (and vice-versa) since gold was universally-valued. If I found an item that you didn't want, I'd just sell it to someone else and then use that gold to buy your item. If, instead, we had to go item-for-item... suddenly it's nowhere near as easy to find a trade... and instead of going on to Amazon.com (the AH) to buy your item it's more like you have to go to a swap meet, walk around, see everything, and then haggle with the owner.
That being said, the RMAH didn't "destroy" anything because they certainly didn't balance drop rates around the RMAH. Drop rates were balanced around the GAH since that was the one that they figured everyone would use. The RMAH was just a method by which they took $$$ away from 3rd party sites.
The accessibility definitely made the RMAH more popular than D2JSP but, frankly, I'm sick of people who know no self-control whining that Blizzard needs to put in limits so that they don't ruin things for themselves. I'm sick of things that I enjoy going the way of the dodo bird because other people will use the AH 24/7 even though they hate it because they need to have the absolute best gear and then blame Blizzard.... as if Blizzard ever really intended for people to sit in the AH screen all day every day. It's just a lack of responsibility and ownership of your own decisions at that point.
Okay Nostradamus, would you like a cookie for your time?
/next
Wonderful, you were correct, I was correct too but I don't care nearly as much? I thought it was a bad idea, they disagreed, that's okay. It's okay if people disagree with us. I'm personally glad that Blizzard experimented with the RMAH. It didn't work the way they wanted it to, it worked about how I expected it to. *shrug*
Finally, please work on the following: 1) coming up with a GOOD reason to argue for/against something next time, like trying to affect change; 2) presenting logical arguments with reasonable evidence from trusted sources.
For what it's worth, I personally never liked the RMAH and never used it, but this anti-RMAH trolling after the fact is just ridiculous.
"The RMAH Destroyed Diablo 3 for me and I Told You So"
Too much of the "feedback" about D3 has turned to people ranting and raving that the game isn't 100% customized to their wants and needs. It's ridiculous. What's really upsetting is that no game in the history of games has ever been perfect in that regard, but that didn't stop any of us from enjoying any of them.
FF8 wasn't as good as FF7 - they tried some new things and they didn't work - but it was still a damned fun game that was well worth the purchase price. Have we really gotten to the level that anything short of complete perfection (evaluated on a person-by-person basis) has to be trolled to hell and back for being a failure? Is that the general attitude that the internet has enabled?
A few points:
1. This isn't some "after the fact" rationalization which Zhaph claims it is. The quotes were from before when Blizzard decided to remove the RMAH, and some were from even before launch.
2. Medea294 is incorrect to say that everyone knew the RMAH was a bad idea except Jay Wilson. In fact, many people defended the RMAH and some of those people are quoted in the OP.
3. As for me not buying the game. That doesn't mean I don't know what's happening in the game. I still read and watch news. I didn't buy the game because of the RMAH. I would be a hypocrite if I did buy it. I didn't even buy the game when they announced the RMAH was being removed, I only bought it yesterday, AFTER it was removed for real.