This kind of language does seem to point to an auction system that most of us can probably see working quite well in Diablo III. Although there is no exact information on how Diablo III's trading system will work, the article does emphasize that Blizzard is well aware of a need to drastically improve upon Diablo II's chat channels that drove people to trade through community forums.This [random loot system] is far different from a persistent online game like Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, where each item must be individually, meticulously designed and fixed in its attributes so that it is properly balanced for its location in the game universe and the difficulty of obtaining it. Players there want to know that if they get together with 10 or 20 people and spend four hours conquering a certain dungeon, they will certainly reap specific rewards.
Diablo, by contrast, is about jumping in and seeing what fate brings. But what if you uncover that great halberd, and you happen to be a physically feeble wizard who can’t use big, two-handed weapons at all?
That’s where the trading comes in. Now, out of millions of other players, you want to find a magic-fearing barbarian who has come across, say, an enchanted staff that inflicts extra damage to wilderness beasts, increases the bearer’s willpower, leaches magic from enemies and increases the holder’s chance of finding additional magic items (also a potent combination). But how do you find that guy and make the trade?
Once Diablo III arrives, millions of players will generate items of randomized treasure every day. That can make eBay look like a flea market. Keeping track of it all online and designing trading tools that can handle that kind of volume is a gargantuan programming and design challenge. It is one big reason Blizzard has been working on the game for so long. And it may also be why the company hasn’t detailed or demonstrated Diablo III’s trading systems yet.
In Diablo II, released in 2000, you had to sit in any of hundreds of chat channels for hours, advertising the deal you sought. If your prospective partner was in another channel, you might never find him (or, far less likely, her).
Blizzard knows that just won’t cut it anymore. Today’s players will demand simple yet powerful tools to create their own bustling virtual economy without the tedium. Call it an advanced sort of auction house.
Because Blizzard has not revealed anything official about the trading system, there are still plenty of questions that have yet to be answered. How easy will it be to barter? Will auction houses only be accessibile in certain areas, or will it just be a window that can be opened at any time and in any place? Fortunately, before the upcoming beta every system will be revealed and all of our questions about trade, followers, and any other currently unannounced system will be answered. Unfortunately, that time is not now, but that does mean you can discuss and debate how you think Diablo III's trade system should work in the topic below.
The article ends in what seems to be good news about the game's development from Jay Wilson.
Official Blizzard Quote:
“We’re definitely in the home stretch. We’re crunching. This is when the magic happens.”
He might simply mean that it will be tailored to an ARPG, as opposed to an MMORPG.
I really don't know how to take the prospect of 6 months. For all we know, it might not even take that long if the Beta isn't filled with game-hindering bugs. If there are just a handful, I could imagine them trimming down those "6 months" to about 5 or 4.
There should even be a page for your items being sold/ bought when your out fighting so you can keep track of your own items and still buy and sell loot while out killing stuff. A mobile auction ... lol thus there would never be a need to go to town unless for quests or something of that sort
That's terrible, carnage - I'm sorry to hear you've had so much trouble. I can only hope things get better for you soon.
The way I imagine an auction house in D3 working would be something like the trade windows we had from d2 where you can drop one or more items in a "box" set a gold price or allow for counter/barter offers then post the auction. It would show up in a list where people could search for various items, names, prices, etc. Then, when people make offers they too have an "inventory box" where they can put items up as an offer and/or gold. I would hope there would be a section for notes too.
But hey, what do I know - they could totally go a different direction.
As for the home stretch, not to be a debbie downer, but if you watch the Blizzard 20th Anniversary retrospective video, Alan Adham says he told his development team for Starcraft every day that they were in the "home stretch" when, in his words "of course, we were nowhere near the home stretch." Apparently that "home stretch" lasted for 8 months. =/
I think putting a time-frame on the beta, from our vantage, might be a dangerous thing to do. In my opinion, the beta will focus primarily on class balance, gameplay flow, bnet feel/scalability, and system performance/scale testing. I think the length of the beta be largely dependent on how much iteration is needed to properly treat beta feedback.. Bugs should not and, in my opinion, will not determine how long the beta lasts.
After all, what are patches for?
I think we're going to see all the amenities of a traditional auction house (such as in WoW), but with the ability to barter facilitated in the same interface. That's pretty much the hint I got from the article - they want to preserve the bartering feel of Diablo II. Either they will have a Bnet interface or there will be a more immersive thing, like a persistent game or NPC you can access in-game to pull up the auction house.
I'm not sure how they're going to tie in bartering, but I was imaging something along the lines of being able to message or PM the seller right from the auction house to indicate interest. This happened a lot in WoW from my experience, especially when players could not afford those Epic BoE's but had a ton of farmed inventory they were willing to trade.
So as the article suggests, you have a scenario where two players each have something the other one really needs - a perfect match. It's these cases where bartering has an economic advantage over the auction house because neither player needs to liquidate their items in order to purchase them; that is, they avoid the loss of selling them for gold, so they can in turn get gold to buy the item. Big assumption here though is there is no inefficiency in trying to find that "perfect match". Which is exactly what I'm very curious to see what Blizzard will do as far as the match finding goes.
As for all the people saying "I hope this home stretch isn't like SC2," keep in mind that SC2 was delayed by B.net 2.0, which was something the SC2 team didn't have that much control over, so when they were talking about their home stretch they probably weren't taking B.net into account. Fortunately thats something the D3 team doesn't have to worry about.
Yea, while reading the article I pretty much came to the conclusion that bartering will still be there, but I don't see how it would really work in an Auction House system. Unless they have something like 'I would take any of these 5 items.' Which I just don't see working as well as a gold based AH. My bet is that bartering will be handled more through a trade window, but that would also make it so that using the AH would be considerably more common unless you don't need to be in a game with someone in order to open a trade window with them.
No that's a fair rebuttal, I neglected to mention the main assumption of that comment. What I meant to say is, imho, most of the big showstopper bugs are going to be resolved before Blizzard releases the code for Beta test. I believe that Bliz has a very high defect standard which, if it isn't met, will gate the Beta release. So what I was really trying to say is, it's unlikely software defects will lengthen the Beta test cycle, because most of the defects will already be resolved. Along the same lines, it's unlikely that a lack of defects will shorten the Beta cycle. That's why they have a long, iterative Alpha test stage, and a friends and family Beta.. so they can have a predictable, specific public Beta, focused on gameplay, scalability, and compatibility.
Now it's definitely possible that scale and platform compatibility issues will emerge during Beta that could require some low-level re-writes, but Blizzard code is super-stable, so the likelihood of that actually happening is super low Again, just in my opinion.
Yeah, what he said.
And I support the auction house idea. I just hope they go about it the right way. I'd like it if it was a separate window within the Multiplayer window and there'd be subcategories where people are putting up items and stuff they just want to sell. It would be like a forum, in a way, but there would be certain parameters that must be filled before one can post.
Also, you would have to set a minimum value/ultimately desired item to come out of the trade. For instance:
If person A wants a high class emerald, and let's imagine that it costs 5000 gold and he sees someone posting a high class emerald in the "house," he can put up 5000 gold initially. Someone else can come in and place their own bid and, based on how much person A wants a high class emerald, he'll have to surpass that amount (like any auction house).
Now, if person B wants a unique sword in exchange for 10 high class gems and it happens to be an item that person A also wants, he'll have to put up 10 high class gems to meet the requirement.
I just want it to be practical and not fluffed up.
yesssssss!!
yesssssss!!
But that's where the magic happens.