Quote from Markco_Polo
Actually, these secrets are just parlor tricks used to bring the masses to my website. There, I admitted it. I use fantastic "secrets" to increase interest in auctioneering among the masses. You know what I do next however? Instead of attempting to bottle these secrets and sell them as miracle cures, I take the person aside and explain the error of their ways.
This section confuses me. You pull them aside to teach them the "error of their ways", which... they learned from your site?
That tactic seems a bit disingenouous. And it seems weird that you're freelly admitting that the tricks you advertise to pull people into your site probably won't work long term.
I don't think there will ever be potential to make a first world living wage in the Diablo 3 RMAH. The 5$ per week estimate is probably a lot closer.
It comes down to this. There is no way to farm enough things with one account to make good money. That means you are stuck with variations on "buy low-sell high", and making all your profit off the difference between an ideal sell, and a poor sell. But in an economy where most prices will be fairly low, that difference will be mostly small and it's going to take a huge volume of sells. There will be major competition to get those sells, because there's real money involved.
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Among the points raised for being opposed to gear visibility is the concept of players with non-cookie-cutter/-mainstream/-uber gear having their game experience negatively affected. This is a bunch of worry and stress over nothing. Allow me to ramble.
Some people act like assholes in life and in online games. Diablo III is supposed to have cooperative online PvE. If the people you are playing with don't have any interest in cooperating with and helping you and the team move forward in the game and/or as characters, simply don't play with them! If someone joins a game, sees that another player has what is in their opinion sub-optimal gear and then leaves: that's great, now nobody has to play with that jerk! Also, trolls will give everyone shit for nothing; it's just something to expect when one enters the interwebs. I don't advocate putting up with them, instead, avoid them.
Lots of fuckwits play online games. Blizzard appears to have already taken away a number of ways that they can be obnoxious (separating PvE from PvP, for example). I really think that hiding gear for the sake of avoiding discrimination, rudeness, etc. is bizarre especially in a "mature" game for adults. If someone is so shallow, stupid, and close-minded that they wouldn't try to participate in cooperative play with someone because the person had "bad gear," I would so much rather figure that out before I started playing with them. Why not let those who aren't going to be fun people to play with naturally select themselves? Hiding one's gear so that one has the opportunity to spend more time playing with dicks is kinda silly...
It appears that in playing through normal and maybe nightmare, the difficulty will be such that suboptimal or even crappy gear will be just fine. Even if one is forced to play with random strangers, it shouldn't be impossible to then make friends with the people who are there to have fun and treat people nicely. With millions of players and good fansites like diablofans with genuine people who are there to enjoy the game and help everyone out, a normal person shouldn't find it impossible to find up to 3 others who can act and treat others like adults and enjoy playing a video game together...
To summarize, something which could potentially allow assholes to reveal themselves earlier than they otherwise would is not necessarily bad on the basis of that trait.