DiabloFans

Quote from Deventh

Lets put horns on everything and everyone now. <_< But big ones that will be chopping your eyes out if you get close.

Yes! They should also be on flames! They could give us a fire dye that sets your armor ablaze when you apply it

Quote from Tenhi

A Monk with Horns isnt bad ass... thats stupid Oo he doesnt look like a monk anymore

I know, awesome right? Bald guy with staff is way worse than bald guy with staff in big armor with horns.

Too bad we can't post cross-realm

I'm a little confounded by why Blizzard purposefully separate their american english from european english forums (I know they've done this ever since WoW, don't point it out). Apart from servers having a slightly different downtime cycle and the occassional server error I don't see the point in it really.

Quote from Feabreg

Yeah... what's the thing with the horns... all the helmets i've seen have horns...

why Blizzard, WHY???

Because horns are seriously bad ass.

Quote from Daemaro

Ugh, reinstalling SC2 so I can haz post. Not renewing WoW.

Uh, you don't need to have sc2 installed. You just need the account from it

Just read the winner from 2010, and it was actually really good. Seems like a problem for SC and D fanfic writers would be the less developed worlds they have access to, because Warcraft has such a vast amount of information to draw upon for setting and plot.

I honestly don't know. Maybe it's because the UI isn't finalized, maybe it's to make it more accessible to a wider range of people, maybe it's just standard practice and no one really know why they do it.

Quote from SoulMonster420

Unless I'm just misunderstanding the word "Chinese", in that it just means somebody who plays a video game for 8+ hours a day for the purpose of selling virtual gear. If that is truly the case by saying "Chinese Farmer" you are formulating a stereotype about a specific race, thus actually saying something racist and it needs to stop.

You are misunderstanding it. Chinese farmer does in fact refer to just what it sounds like (or any other farmer in a country with very low labor costs). These games are region-locked, but there's nothing stopping people in china buying american/european boxes and playing on american/european realms.

Exact figures don't exist, but we're talking about a global market worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Quote from RobotMojo

It's like bands that build their careers on a classic, unique sound, and then deviate to pop crap and dismiss and discourage the sound that made them popular.

And that's never happened. And it totally doesn't work either

I think there are several factors to why Diablo 3 looks as it does, foremost is probably the fact that the organization has expanded in size yet not diversed as much since the creation of WoW. That said, I am one of those who do like it.

Quote from CherubDown

Commander. With all due respect, get a couple Klingon chips, flux tubes, and Dilithium converters and this won't happen again.

What is this clingonships you speak of?

Quote from Apoc

They mentioned nicer drops, but I wonder if that is still going to follow the linear progression of stats we will expect from lvl 1-60 or if indeed it has to be accelerated to compensate for the lack of new skills after max level.

It can't scale too much, or it will be impossible for new characters to enter the difficulty and survive. And since the difficulty is supposed to be relatively even across all the acts in Inferno, the same items will probably be possible to get from both the ac1 and act 4 bosses.

Quote from CherubDown

ROFL, I love how the Inferno link goes to the ol' Sorc spell. Couldn't help but chuckle there.

Due to disturbances in the quantum communications network of the staff caused by unknown reasons the usual edit contingencies could not be activated in time for the publication of this news post. Our staff is currently at work to try and rectify this unfortunate event.

This is exactly what most people, or so it seemed, suspected Inferno would be like. And I think it's definitely a good change. Not only will the entire game, as Wilson said, be more viable once you reach lvl 60, but here's to hoping that it will be hard as well

Quote from bananaabandit

I am almost certainly wrong but didnt someone at Diablo say that each currency will have its own auction house? If thats true then surely it wont really be a problem? (unless you are chinese of course )

Quote from palathos

However, I am not sure if there is anything stopping them from intentionally purchasing North American copies of the game in order to play and trade in the American currency game.

This is correct, anyone can buy a copy of the game and play it from aynwhere in the world, thus allowing farmers to be global.

Quote from mindstain

Something I can't help but feel like is being overlooked here is the incentive to compromise accounts.

Certainly, and a lot of pressure is on Blizzard to make sure all of this works. Since they guarantee transactions, they will have to make sure this works as good as possible or it will generate problems, and losses, for them. Hopefully this will not deteriorate their otherwise, from my experience, excellent account customer service.

Quote from professor_zim

If they introduce ever increasing tax on putting items to auction, that would prevent farming/botting. Say if there are 10 open bids, it would cost 11% of asked price to put 11th item, 12% for 12th etc, up to 100%. Or same, but on the daily basis, that would force acquiring multiple copies of the game, setting up multiple money accounts and would not generate any profit above some small amount. In other words, Blizzard could limit how much money an account could make per day.

Blizzard wants to keep a flat and low listing fee, partly because the lower the fee the less opportunities there are for third-party sites to establish themselves, partly because it won't create weird supply spikes where people suddenly stop putting up cheap items for auctioning because the fee suddenly increased. It also makes the system easier to grasp. Simplicity for the end user is key.

As for forcing people to acquire multiple copies, over time that one-time investmenst for a serious farmer won't really matter anyway if a copy of a game lasts for a long enough time.

Quote from Nanaki_Son_Of_Seto

*Edit* PhrozenDragon, Sixen, ScyberDragon, and everyone else I missed, you guys are the shit thanks for all the good work, and keeping this site as awesome as its been.

Thank you

Quote from Nanaki_Son_Of_Seto

*Edit 2* Blizzard said that they did "what everyone seemed to want" with the real money buying items deal. How come they didnt listen to anything else that everyone seemed to want?

Probably because they were bad ideas, or because they didn't work with some other mechanic/idea they had for D3.

Quote from Dawnbreaker1

This seems to me, to be the direction they were going with the removal of skill points - to allow more experimentation and open, easy game-play. The new proposed changes to runes would make us much less likely to experiment, and instead of using 5 runes to trial the 20-odd skills, we would need a minimum of 100 runes (and that is in the unlikely event that you never double up on the runes-skill binding).

The problem with your argument is that skill points were not removed to make the game dumber, they were removed because the skill point mechanic didn't work with the rest of the game. Runes are there to make the skill system more complex.

In fact, the rune system can in effect be considered a soft mechanic to limit respeccing. True, you can switch skills on the fly whenever you want, but unless you have the proper runes to go along with that switch it won't be feasible later in the game. It will definitely be possible in the early game, which will allow you to experiment with different skill setups. But the late game in Hell will not.

I like the system, even the random rune effect thing if they decide to go with that. It's the exact same system that Identify served in D2, so I don't see the big deal with runes being determined after you put them into a skill. You can always just replace them with the old one you just had in there.

Quote from The_Real_Rotan

This doesn't stop D2JSP or other 3rd party sites from selling Hardcore items. All Blizzard did was cut half of their profits; I think Blizzard should still have an AH for HC. People will still use these 3rd parties if they want to buy their items with risk of losing items upon death or not. It will be like D2 HC then, everyone would want FG and trades would rarely happen. I think Blizzard is underestimating how many people do play HC and how many do buy items or trade of D2JSP despite any risk of death.

If I were to venture I guess, I think one of the big reasons they're not offering this for HC characters is because of the liability issue: if Blizzard's servers lag and your character dies, who's fault is it that all the items you've invested in were irrevocably destroyed? Should Blizzard be obliged to restore your HC character because their servers malfunctioned? You may say no, but a whole lot of people would say yes, and with actual money spent it could become a problem.

Quote from italofoca

• It's going to be harder for an casual and/or noob players to get the high end gear without using RL money (everything else constant). In case of low drop rates, this might be an extreme problem. Blizz might compensate that with relatively high drop rates.

But everything else might not be constant. For instance, the idea people have put forth that this will provide greater incentives for farming will increase the supply.

Quote from italofoca

• The game focus must be changed or the game is ruined. I mean, in past Diablo games the main objective of the majority of SC players was to acumulate the best gear possible. They can't keep this focus anymore - noone will invest hours of play in something that can be done with an fat wallet. I believe thats what this banner feature is about. It's the only thing that can't be traded in the AH and cleary shows your acomplishments as an player.

There's also still no information on the end game. Blizzard has constantly talked about the endgame and how it will be better than in D2 but haven't actually revealed anything.

And I know I at least will invest hours of play into the game, because I believe it will actually be fun to play. Where there's one there's more.

Quote from italofoca

• Only cheaper items will be traded in gold. How cheap the item must be for traders use the gold AH will depend on the fees.

And depending on how many people actually want to use the gold AH. If there's a fan interest in rejecting cash, which there are indications of, there will be opportunities to trade in gold, and as I have outlined this should provide both sides with equal prices.

And if by extension there is no interest in selling good stuff on the AH, that means there's no demand for good stuff on the gold AH, ergo no one is actually using it, not even those who protect it right now.

This generated a lot of responses. Thanks to everyone (especially Don) for holding down the fort while I was asleep

Quote from palathos

In essence when you sell an item in the cash AH, you are working for Blizzard to sell a piece of their intellectual property for them. They reap the benefit on any and all transactions which occur with real money.

How can no one see the benefit the players get? Blizzard naturally gets money because they're offering the players a service. People seem to have this idea that just because we're talking about byte transactions here it will cost Blizzard nothing.

Wrong. The development cost of the AH infrastructure, the agreement with the eventual third-party transaction companies, possible legal issues, not to mention the customer support, PR problems and work that will have to be poured into protecting the Battle.net infrastructure from bots and malicious activities. The transaction itself will cost Blizzard nothing, but there are many other costs to cover with this system. Blizzard needs money for this, and the bot/hack work will benefit all. But they're only taking money from people who want to buy items. All of you who don't want to pay are getting a more stable economy, amore hack protection at no personal cost to you.

And no one seems to get the customer value this produces. If Blizzard has facilitates a trade with you for a small fee, then the value you got in the form of a new item and the value the seller got for an item sold are still there. Blizzard isn't slaving you to the work wheel and taking all the profit, they're providing their customers with an entirely new kind of service.

Quote from kaiserfeuer

I have doubts that the RMT AH will have the desired effect of negating an item becoming currency, and until blizzard discloses how much they will charge to post an item it will be hard to see how profitable and the state of the RMT AH. I hope it will be affordable i would prefer to have everything at a reasonable price than hundreds of dollars.

The fee will be minimal. A small fee is in Blizzard's best interest, since a large fee will discourage trade and once again provide an incentive for third-part sites to eke out an existence. A higher fee also disrupts the exchange rate between the gold AH and cash AH and will create a less fluid economy. And that could generate imbalances between the two AH's.

Quote from lordbone

Also, people will always find a way and reason of using third party sites like they are doing right now in DII.

No they won't. If you can buy the same ice cream at the same price as in town but right next to your house rather than 10 miles away, you will always buy ice cream next door. There is no incentive to do otherwise.

Quote from lordbone

If you look at the sites now, you see that they are selling (for Wow) 1000 gold for 5 euro's or so...
I'm pretty sure these things will not change.

That proce says nothing about trade in D3 at all. It is irrelevant, because that price is not set in relation to the aggregate total of all gold that is produced in WoW, which would include all the gold circulating on WoW server between normal players as well.

Quote from Zig

The reason that people were using these sites like D2JSP was because there was no real economy in the game, to begin with - in other words, D2JSP was almost a natural respond to the lack of an ingame economy.

That's possibly true, but I think a fear was that such sites are already poised and ready for D3. Then again I think this move is also a way to continue to generate revenue for an online game that requires massive support without instituting a monthly fee. It's an experiment for sure.

Quote from N0kI

Quote from NeciFiX

My only concern is that people will probably want to BUY items in gold, but, SELL them in real money. See how that wouldn't work?

...and for that reason Gold AH will have only crap items.
LEGENDARY drops will ONLY be sold/bought in the real money AH.

Reread what I said, try to grasp the basic economic forces at work here, then come back.

Quote from Runner55

RMAH (or even in game gold AH) won't print $ for customers at all. Yes, some will make money and others will spend, but if nobody's putting money into the system then nothing is coming out of it. In fact, money coming out of the system to the end consumer (the player) will always be less than what's being put into it. I believe that the only thing creating more money in this world is debt, but that's totally out of scope here.

You're right, and the same principles as for debt will dictate the amount of money in the system at any one time according to these three factors:
1. How large are Blizzard's fees?
2. What does the average item sell for in $?
3. How mauch of inserted e-balance is withdrawn as $/spent on Blizzard goods?

The lower the fees, higher the average prices and the less money withdrawn, the more people will be able to benefit from this system without putting in money themselves. So not only is it in Blizzard's interest to keep low fees to combat third-party selling, it's also in their interest because it will allow more people to participate in the cash auctioning and thus the system as a whole.

Quote from Johnnyxp64

so this Rmoney AH its only going to cause MORE problems rather solve them! people will fill up the servers from this in order to gain money and for us poor normal player that just want to play our SinglePlayer ALONE, we have to go online to those overloaded servers that could crash.

Are you kidding me? The reason you're against this is because you think it would cause the servers to overload and prevent you from playing online?

Quote from Zanmato

It became a new game in itself, and it was always a laugh to trade your newly found items into something else, and then see if you could get something that was worth more in the first place. With the currency being gold(or especially with it being real money) this idea gets utterly destroyed.

That was totally screwed before the cash AH was announced anyway, so it's not like the cash AH destroyed that for you.

Quote from Zanmato

The value on everything from items to gold is gonna plummet, because the chinese can afford to underbit everyone almost regardless of the price. If you look at item sites today, highrunes go for less than €1, and it's still profitable for them. We are gonna reach a point where selling your items isn't worth the trouble, rendering the RMAH pointless in the first place.

No. Key difference: professional farmers will have to make money on this. Players have this as a hobby and do not need to generate a set amount of cash each hour. Farmers will have to compete with us.

That's why I'm hesitant against the whole "quit my job and do this"-idea. When I say make money, I do not mean it will cover the alternative cost of quitting your job, especially not in the US or EU. And if it does, then you're no longer playing a game you're just farming.

Quote from Zanmato

Look at WoW today, how effin cheap is gold on farmsites? So for all their hard work here, blizzard is NOT shutting down the profitable farm sites, and the RMAH will not be a properly community controlled economic flow of currency.

Hard to say. It will all depend on availability of items and what margins organized farmers have.

Quote from Jano_El_Bozo

It won't prevent third parties doing their malicious deeds.

Yes it does. See ice cream above.

Quote from Jano_El_Bozo

It doesn't protect player base.

Yes it does. See original post about Blizzard insurance.

Quote from Jano_El_Bozo

It's just a gimmicky way to cash in on some cents.

Depends on how you define gimmicky, but I'd still say no.

Quote from Jano_El_Bozo

IT creates a nice illusion for naive people to think they can earn some buck of their items. Well, i suspect you might earn something like 20-30 bucks (with luck) for a week of play, i dunno, but it's chump-change when you compare it to what Blizzard will get from all those gullable players who think they will be able to quit they're day job, and sell items online.

If someone does that without properly investigating whether it's possible, then you can either call them a visionary who failed or a dumbass who got what was coming. Either way, it's not Blizzard's responsibility to teach economic prudence to its customers. Somewhere you have to assume that your customers are informed individuals capable of making their own economic decisions. If not, then how dare BLizzard sell games to people with gaming problems?!

Quote from Jano_El_Bozo

First of all, why did those Item Shops started to exist? Obviously, people wanted their items for Cookie-Cutter specs. Well, why the game was balanced in such a way in the first place? Why itemisation was made in such way that certain items were so good, that almost every character wanted to use them? That's all due to bad game balance.

Incorrect. More powerful items are built into the game progression structure and do not depend on cookie-cutter builds existing. Each build will have a logical next gear step, and people will want to buy that.

Quote from Jano_El_Bozo

Undercutting? No problem, a shady company has way more money then little billy, they can sell an item for less and earn some cash, and little billy won't be so lucky - loosing his 1$ or 50c deposit. Raising the price of certain items? No problem. With enough money they can buy out all the lower priced items and sell them for tenfold if they so desire. There is a possibility of people farming left and right for said shops and so on.

There is, but it won't be that easy. First of all, undercutting is not bad, it's a consequence of an auction system. How an organization with running and labor costs are supposed to undercut billy who playes in his spare time and makes a profit so long as he sells above the fees is another matter entirely.

As for controlling the market, first of all they'd have to do it against hundreds of thousands of players in each region. Not easy, but I suppose not entirely impossible either. That could be interesting to watch unfold.

Quote from whatisthis888

The auction house can fail. From reading the OP, you can't make real money of it but Blizzard and 3rd party(e.g Paypal) can. That sucks. Basically you can put money in but not take money out.

Incorrect, you can and it was clearly stated in the OP.

Quote from whatisthis888

You can get enough ppl to boycott the system because of ANTI -blizzard behavior as well as self profit motive. YOu can portentially have a group of farmers who do not sell items in the auction house but 3rd party websites.

Name one reason.

It is inherently less trustworthy.
It is more of a hassle.
It is of roughly equal cost, because if they sell it for less then loss of customers in the AH will cause prices to drop down to similar levels. And they can't sell for more because then people wouldn't use them.

Quote from Tsukishima

2. Due to arbitrage and the gold/money exchange rate, they will be able to generate a stable market. The central bank has tricks they can pull if there's too much or too little money, Blizzard has tricks they can pull if there's too much or too little gold too. They are gaining the powers of a central bank with respect to gold.

Very true, since all gold introduced to the economy goes through drops. Which is great, because then they can adjust unbalanced amounts of gold drops.

Of course that also has the potential to get screwed like any central bank not properly being able to predict economic outcomes, but this is no different than how things would have been without a cash AH.

I think I'm gonna go for toggle, I always disliked continuously pressing down the alt button whenever I wanted to pick up loot.

I voted vanity items. I'm not sure they will include it, but it's the only store they could do. Anything else would conflict with Blizzard's current design philosophies that they employ for WoW.