Actually, I'll go out on a limb here and say that many of you are really pissed at Blizzard right now. But before you condemnd Blizzard of sacrilege, we should take a closer look at what this system will really mean for the players.
The Basics First
Buying
Selling
Example
You can use the cash AH without spending a dime
It doesn't matter which AH you end up using anyway
Added bonus: It eliminates third-party selling
I don't want this crap in Diablo
Potential Hazards
Farmers
Hacking
Conclusion
The Basics First
Blizzard has revealed that there will be two auction houses available to players through the Battle.net interface: one which uses in-game gold as a currency (just as the WoW auction house does) and one which uses real world money such as dollars, euros or similar depending on which region you play in.
Buying
In order to buy items, all you have to do is transfer over money to your B.net account from your credit card, which will convert it into e-balance. You can then go right ahead and bid on items with your e-balance. If you win the auction, your bid is automatically subtracted from your e-balance and you get the item. If you bid on an item but someone else outbids you, it will cost you nothing. This is true for both the gold and cash AH systems, the only difference between them is that in one you will use actual money.
Selling
In order to sell items, it's a little more tricky. If you want to put up an item for sale, you have to pay a fee. This fee will be subtracted from your money whether you succeed in selling it or not and given to Blizzard. In the gold AH, this fee is a gold sum (again exactly like WoW), and in the cash AH it's your e-balance. This fee is set at a fixed nominal value (the exact amount we do not know at this time). If you don't manage to sell the item, it will remain in your stash and you can try to sell it again, but the fee will already have been removed from your e-balance. If you do sell it however, an additional selling fee is also applied and given to Blizzard, and afterwards one of two things can happen.
By default, money that people buy items for will be added to the sellers e-balance (or gold total, if they sell in gold). However, it will also be possible to set up your account so that it will be added your credit card. This will require adding a third party payment service to the account to handle the actual transaction. Blizzard is currently negotiating with potential companies at this point in regards to who will handle this service, so at this point we don't know who it will be or in what regions they will operate. However, it will be possible to make money selling items in Diablo III. What will not be possible, however, is to convert your e-balance back into cash. So if you sell an item and haven't set up your account to give you cash, it will increase your e-balance instead. That e-balance cannot later be withdrawn as cash, but it can be used to buy other items and anything in the Blizzard store, including games and WoW subscription time.
Blizzard has also stated that every player gets a number of auctions which allows them to put up cash auctions without paying the nominal fee. It's unclear whether this is a fixed amount for each account (x free auctions in a lifetime), a fixed amount concurrently (x free auctions at any one time) or a recharging value (x free auctions every week), but Bashiok has hinted we might be talking about a set number each week. In any case, using such a free waiver will provide you with the possibility of making money without risking a single cent. We'll get back to that further down.
Example
(NOTE: CONTAINS ENTIRELY FICTIONAL NUMBERS I MADE UP FOR THIS EXAMPLE.)
Here we have three people: Sixen, Scyber and Nektu.
Sixen has put up a leather cap for auction for 10$. In order to do this, he had to pay a nominal listing fee of $1 to Blizzard. Scyber sees this leather cap and decides to bid $10 on it. A couple of minutes later, Nektu sees the same item. He thinks it's worth more than $10, and bids $12. Scyber thinks anything over $10 is too expensive, and does not bid any more. The auction runs out a few hours later with no bids more bids being placed, and Nektu wins the item.
At this point, $12 are subtracted from Nektu's e-balance while nothing happens to Scyber's e-balance. The selling fee, in this example also $1, is subtracted from Sixen's $12, which means he has made $10 total on his auction (-$1 listing fee, -$1 selling fee)
Under normal circumstances this would be added to his e-balance, but if Sixen has also set up his account to forward him cash, the third party payment service will at this point extract a fee from those $11, say $1, in order to administer the transaction and give Sixen the rest, in this case a total of $9.
So Nektu pays $12, Scyber pays nothing, Sixen gets $9, Blizzard gets $2 and the third party gets $1.
You can use the cash AH without spending a dime
Using the cash AH is entirely optional. Players aren't forced by Blizzard to use it to trade for items. However, many of you fear that having a cash AH will make it so all the best items only sell for real money, thus in reality forcing people to spend money in order to get the best stuff. And while that's appears to be true on the surface, it isn't really. Here's why:
If you sell an item using one of your free weekly waivers, you can put up an item in the cash AH, sell it, and generate a positive e-balance without spending a single $. With that e-balance, you can then continue to put up items for sale and, using your initial e-balance, pay for the listing fees. Once you accumulate enough e-balance, you can then buy items for real money without having put in a single cent yourself. So you sell that legendary axe and legendary armor you found and use the generated e-balance to buy an awesome staff instead. The system doesn't lock anyone outside of acquiring the best items, what it does is allow people to spend money to get items faster. But it's still perfectly possible for anyone to use the cash AH.
And you won't even have to exchange legendaries for legandaries. If Blizzard has done its job properly and accomplished what was intended, which is to make gold a valuable resource, then people will want huge amounts of gold for their crafting, repair and vendor needs even if they only use the cash AH. And since gold can be traded on the AH, anyone will be able to sell gold for cash. Of course, the exchange rate between gold and cash is impossible to predict as of now, but in theory anyone will be able to make e-balance without spending any money. Provided there are some individuals out there who actually do put money into the system, some original e-balance has to be generated with actual money. But they will not have to be a majority.
In fact, the cash system will establish an exchange rate between gold and real money. The exchange rate will be an approximation since there won't be any mods available to track all auctions, but the market will probably reach a rough value. At that point, every piece of gold you make in the game will be worth an amount of $ equal to the exchange rate. This money cannot be taken from your e-balance (can't make e-balance into cash) but it can be used to buy items and blizzard products.
It doesn't matter which AH you end up using anyway
What did you say? Each piece of gold dropped will be worth a certain amount of real money? Not only does this mean that you are tecnically making money as you play, it also means that whether you use the gold AH or the cash AH will be irrelevant. The concept is called Arbitrage, and for those of you not accustomed to economics I'll explain how it works.
Let's say that I find a legendary axe that I don't need and thus want to sell. I can either sell it for gold or e-balance. Looking in the AH, I see that there are incidentally ten axes, five in each AH, currently up for sale: five go for 2000g and the other five for $20. But I decide to see what gold sells for, and I quickly see that 200g costs $1 in the cash AH. Afterwards I proceed to sell my legendary axe for $19, which the sold for gold will be 19*200=3,800g
That's arbitrage, the possibility to profit due to price imbalances in different markets. Even if I didn't want cash, it's still a better option for me to use the cash AH under these circumstances, since it gives me more gold. The next thing I do is naturaly to buy the other five legendary axes for 2,000g each, sell them for $19 again, essentially giving me 5*(3,800-2,000)=9,000g profit without having killed a single monster.
This will of course not last, since eventually other people will figure out that the legendary axe is underpriced in the gold AH and correctly adjust their prices. I probably couldn't even have sold those five axes for $19 again, since I essentially bombed the market by doubling the supply of those axes. But that is exactly the point. This kind of equilization will happen continuously across all different items for sale in the two markets, and will work to create a stable exchange rate between gold and $. And when that has happened, it won't really matter which of them you decide to trade in. Even if you consider yourself a purist and never so much as look at the cash AH, the prices you see for items there should be same as those seen in the cash AH.
Perfect equilibrium is generally upset by various factors such as transportation costs, taxes, varying legislations between markets, expiration dates on products etc. In the future Diablo economy many of these are removed: the the flat fees applied to purchases are a transaction cost and will generate some imbalances between the markets, but that's about it. In the end, it will matter little which one you actually use.
Added bonus: It eliminates third-party selling
But that's not everything the AH will accomplish. The purpose of the AH is to eliminate third-party selling of items and the inherent uncertainty that follows from using such sites. I will quote Don here:
Most Diablo II veterans are familiar with D2JSP and the immense use it had in facilitating trade in Diablo II. It wasn't perfect, but it was much better than what Diablo II offered and allowed buyers and sellers to find and trade with each other using a (relatively) stable currency.Quote from
Well in D2 the market essentially worked just the way this real money AH will. Every serious player used D2JSP for trading because of the sheer effectiveness of it. And you could either buy forum gold for real money or sell items for forum gold. There was no way to convert forum gold back to real currency however.
D2JSP was really easy to scam in (since you had to do the trade in-game and giving the currency in the forums) if you weren't careful. The site was also corrupt (they gave gold to their friends who didn't pay for them) and so forth.
With Blizzard now running a cash AH, they've established a low-risk market. Blizzard will in this case act as the insurance of every transaction: if you sell an item and the buyer for some reason has no money, you will still get your money and Blizzard takes that financial hit. All transactions will be guaranteed by Blizzard, which will facilitate a safe and secure trading environment. In addition to that, since Blizzard will not be selling any items and since the exchange rate between gold and $ will be determined solely by the players in a region, Blizzard will have no way to influence it and purposefully generate a corrupt environment. In addition, the cash AH is a much more convenient method of trade, meaning any competing sites will have a hart time, well, competing.
I don't want this crap in Diablo
So far I've explained why you won't be left out of the system and why you won't have to spend real money. But these are all technical arguments. A fundamentally different argument people raise is that bigger wallet = better character. Most comments seem to counter this with "dis would happuned aniway, deal with eet" but that's not entirely true. Yes some people would have bought items for money, but you could at least feel that Blizzard did not support such actions and that an environment where no monetary benefits in RL would ever affect your own gaming experience existed. But "legalizing" it so to speak will with certainly cause a larger percentage of the total gaming population to at least consider engaging in these activities.
And to that, there's really nothing I can say. Because it is true that this will happen and that it will most likely affect how you view the game. Perhaps try to ignore other people's items? Kick their ass in PvP regardless? Secretly gloat that they're giving you money for your items? I don't know. Every change to a game is bound to be unappealing to some players unfortunately.
Potential Hazards
Finally we have the issue of the various kinds of potential risks this system faces: "chinese" farmers and hacks (particularly bots).
Farmers
The first fear is that loosing the restraints of the system will invite countless gold farmers in China and similar to pour into Diablo now that this is allowed. And at face value, we can say that there's no reason for such farmers to reduce in number because of this system, and there's also no reason Blizzard can ban them for. After all, all they've done is buy the game and play it according to the rules (working conditions and such aside, but there's no way for Blizzard to control that).
How will this affect Diablo III? Well, under normal circumstances such farmers operate in a black market outside of the general trade system. They are competing against each other in this environment, but still away from the main body of trade occuring in the general game.
Now however, every Diablo player will become a potential customer, and since the AH will be anonymous it will be impossible for you to tell whether you're buying items from a Chinese farmer or not. Of course, whatever items they generate will have to compete with the prices of every single item that every single player puts up, and the people who previously had to go to them for gold or items can now instead trade with the real players, thus hopefully pushing down prices and making it less profitable for them. Still, it will probably lead to a greater amount of items being generated, but so long as the problem of duping doesn't reappear, it shouldn't be a problem.
Bots
Botting is a second potential problem, one that doesn't really involve any running labor cost other than your electrical bill. Unlike farming however, this is actively prevented by Blizzard and we can only hope that their experience dealing with botting in WoW and SC2 has paid off and will allow them to contain this potential problem well enough. Has this cash AH given botters a bigger incentive? Undoubtedly. Do I think Blizzard can handle it? Yes, otherwise they've done some really terrible estimates prior to announcing this system.
Conclusion
Will this new cash AH force you to spend real money? No.
Is it certain to work/flop? No, neither is certain.
No one has done this before, and so it seems unlikely anyone can guarantee an outcome here. Individual future situations are not that easily prognosticated. But I don't think the outset is all that bad either. What it will do is to hopefully lead all trades to be handled through Battle.net, which will generate a more stable economy, a larger economy of more buyers and sellers, a more liquid market and an opportunity for people who want to spend money on items to do so freely while at the same time allowing people who do not want to spend money to still generate a net profit, and more importantly, still interact with the entire trading community regardless of financial situation. The problem will be accepting that people with more money can buy better gear, but if you can do that you should not be worried about what this system can bring.
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No, this will not eliminate the problem. Gold is a infinite resource Money is not. Gold will inflate and prices for items will rise. Nothing is solved by making gold traded for this e-balance.
You still end up with a game the turns into a pay to win model.
I am sorry but yes, gold in an infinite resource. You should look up what infinite means. The fact that there is no limit to how much gold can exist then there is an infinite amount of gold.
There will ALWAYS be more gold earned by every player than more gold spent. This will only get larger once most players have higher level characters while being geared to the teeth. As player characters get stronger the amount of gold per hour increases. Also once cookie cutter farming builds and farming spots are discovered the amount of gold will also increase. There is no end to the amount of gold or items for that matter to be found in Diablo 3.
I really don't see how you think gold is a limited resource in a game when all resources in said game are unlimited.
If you really can't see this then I really don't think there is any way for you to understand the fears of the RMAH. Its pretty easy to understand that in a game all resources such as gold are simply data that can and will be duplicated while a resource like real money is limited. There is a limit to the amount of money and the value it holds in the real world. While in Diablo 3 there is no limit to the amount of gold that can be created in its universe.
There are and always will be more way to cheat in anything than there is to stop or counter it. Look at sports if you are blind and don't think most of them use performance enhancers your crazy and have never looked into doping and that is real life. Anything digital has more holes than a sponge its just a matter of exploiting the holes.
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. Of course 3rd party websites have to gain the trust of the customer. Assuming 3rd party is legit and fulfills ts offers, it can offer customers a bargain by offering godlies at cheaper than AH prices. Flawed AH system it is.
Why can blizz and payment system( e .g maybe paypal) benefit by making real money?
THe E balance system is lame credit system and the only thing blizzard has over the 3rd party sellers is trust and guarantee.
The exchange rate is also stupid. No one agrees with it. baseless determinants of exchange/gold, because there is no consensus on difficuluty obtaining gold / conversion
Because SC2 has people banned every day right? Right? o wait no they fail at that too with the rampand maphacks and drops hacks that ruin ladder in that game. Which was suppose to be an e-sport right?
To your last post before you look at the inflation with way too much optimism. The fact of the matter is anyone and everyone would rather put anything up in the RMT AH for money. Thus Gold has already lost its initial value other than crafting and repairs and what other gold sinks they have. It will no longer be used as something to trade with for items.
Not to mention that bots will be in the game, and the incentive to use bots is so high at this point you would almost be dumb not to use one, because its basically free money.
This does not solve any issues at all. There will still be every problem that they are trying to prevent with the introduction of the RMT AH. If you and anyone else really thinks this will solve all problems with a RMT AH then this game will just be the start of a cycle of games that are modeled as play to win and are sucessful.
I really hope you enjoy the future of games if this follows. Im done arguing, your points are always the same argument you bring nothing new to refute what I say, with every post talking about gold being real money, its a flawed argument and its been said by me and many others the holes in that argument.
This is a video game, there are holes to everything and they will be found there will be giant inflation just like every other RPG out there and as inflation for gold rises the value a dollar has on the game grows. Its not rocket sciences its not even difficult to grasp.
Enjoy the new game model of the future if this goes through. The Pay to Win model.
I'll break my opinion down to two part due to length.A/B
A)
1) Blizz knows how to make games, the fact that we have so much to discuss about and that we know as much
as we do about the in game ecnomics/hacks/bots/fixes/etc. Is simply because they made it possible, they created
the universe in which these things developed. (and if not them, other brilliant gaming companies). Let them deal
with the details and outcomes of their choices. Plus nobody is twisting your arm to pay for items.
2) If they find, down the line, that this system causes more grief than good, they will either change it or remove it, why? Because that's what Blizzard does. So debate however you want, noone can predict 100% the outcome. The only one thing we do know for sure is the following ....GO TO B (1)
3)I can understand folks who run scared at the thought of a broken economy, with good items only being sold in RMAH
and voicing their complaints about it(though it may not be justified). But I do NOT for one second pity the fools who complain about others buying their items with real money and beating them in PvP. Or saying that since Blizzard encourages buying items , they are somewhat insulted and won't be buying/playing the game. Crybabies....
First off myself, and pretty much everyone, don't believe a word of it when they say they wont play. And they know noone believes them too, so they just trolling. Second, that's like saying that since my neighbour's father has more money and my neighbour has a better inheritance, it ruins my life, I cant enjoy myself thus I should just end it. WTF?
I may not have the money to spend on D3, neither would my wife let me spend if i did. But if others do, good for them, shit. Why not let them spend their hard earned cash on something they hold dear to their hearts? And if they are kids spending their parent's hard earn cash, then that's an issue with the parent itself and has nothing to do with Blizzard. Watch and see if my child in the future spends a buck on gaming if I disagreed. I as a parent wouldn't be blaming Blizzard but myself for not educating my child with the values that I hold.
If I was a parent that didnt mind this kind of spending then I would be glad that the money is going towards entertainment. Better than them buying drugs on the streets, or sending money to shady 3rd party companies. Which brings me to my next point.
_____________________________________________________
B
1)No matter how you look at RMAH, flop or success. I'd rather pay 1000 bucks to a company that's been making games we enjoy for decades, than pay 1$ to shady 3rd party companies (not necessarily chinese) for item transactions. So if I was one of those guys planning on spending in D3, I would be freaking extatic to know that the money I'm about to spend isn't gonna go to a company that underpays a bunch of kids to farm, but instead is going to go to Blizzard who in return will have the resources to keep making games for years to come. That's called an indirect investment. That means thanks to folks who will be buying and selling real cash, my kids will probably get to enjoy Blizz games like we had in our youth.
2) To all the purists who say money shouldn't be in games. Why should making money in a game be any less significant than making money at work. Blizzard is possibly opening the doors to a whole new generation of folks who might have an opportunity to make cash while playing games. I see people every day busting their asses in a dead end job that they hate. Go back home miserable with not enough money to go by. Why would giving the future an opportunity to make money while having fun be a bad thing? Where's the problem in that? Shit, is money is the root of all evil, probably. But as we are stuck with it and can't live without it, why not be able to make it in a more enjoyable fashion. Ask anyone who plays sports for a living, they will tell you the same. Sports are a game. Athletes make money for plyaying the game, why not, they are better than us at it. SO,why not let greater computer gamers make money too. If they don't you can bet your arse that others with less honorable purposes will be making it. (like they have been with online games for a decade now).
Conclusion:
This might be the beginning of a new era of online gaming. If it goes for the better, excellent. If not then it was wort a try and can always be sent the same way as the talisman, on the shelf. Who are we to criticize something that has yet come to life and that we do not yet fully understand. Be open minded and enjoy the fact that your even getting the chance to play a game. So many people don't.
No if implemented this will not be scrapped. The whole game will have been made around the RMT AH. If this game in the end is considered crap because of the RMT AH then there is nothing Blizzard can do short of wiping all servers and getting rid of the RMT AH.
But then there will be the contract with what ever online banking service they will sign with. There will be no scrapping of the RMT AH if it goes live.
And yes, you can say people are just trolling saying they won't buy the game, but really there are many that truly will not get this game with the RMT AH being in.
Thats not even including the skill revamp they did, that is also getting backlash, I am also sure the people that really are not buying the game, don't care if you think they are trolling they are simply expressing their feelings of the released information.
This is a huge game breaker if you don't see this as being a Pay to Win model then I don't know what to tell you. You should probably learn a little about human behavior and how at least here in the United States how a dollar means more to a lot of people than their family.
I correct myself, you did read a few more sentences in your light skimming. but still, the fact that your trying to tell me after what I wrote the value of a dollar, shows you dont have a clue what i said in my other paragraphs.
Second, your just pushing your super thoery that they are trying to steal our money. When like i said , noone is forcing you to buy/sell items. The worst possible scenario of all being that the game is scrapped, still wouldnt affect Blizzard stealing your money. It would just be another case of us buying another flopped game. I've done that cuontless times but you know what, like anything else noone twisted my arm to buy the game. So your point is moot either way.
And seriously, pay to win what? Whos gonna win against what, your fighting monsters budddy. Where are you going with this?
So far in this thread not one real concern was raised, because mostly the people who "hate" this new feature are the ones economically uneducated and plain dim-witted.
The only REAL issue I find with this announcement so far is it's effect on the Hardcore players community. I loved the Hardcore in D2 and for the last 3 years of my Diablo2-carrier I played exclusively HC, but I must admit, that I don't think I could play HC with so much money there to be made in SC. Probably most of the dedicated HC players feel this way. It would surely feel a waste to play HC, when you can play SC AND earn money doing it. I hope they change their mind about RMAH on HC.
PS. I am so quitting my job this winter.
HAHA I hope this makes tons of cash too. Since folks need it. But don't quit your job too fast man. lol Pressure of playing might not make it as interesting as making extra money on the side would.
I might not be American, but if I was I'd probably want to kick that ass for making such a dumb off topic generelization that you call a comment. That's pretty sad, kinda makes your whole argument worthless by showing
lack of judgement.
Gold. Resource generated by D3. Tradable for money.
Money. Resource generated by the banks. Tradable for gold.
They are going to create a system by which the virtual goods (gold, items, etc) generated by D3 is given a money value.
1. Every item, gold piece or rune you find in D3 has an equivalent money value. You will earn real money when you play D3!
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.
3. This is all going to be financed by people who put real money into RMT. These people, are going to be giving you money by financing this system. Previously they paid 3rd party sites, now they pay you.
TL;DR -- D3 lets you get richer when you play it and gives a stable economy for both gold or RMT trade.
Successful company is successful.
First of all, there is NO FREE LUNCH. Each e-balance is directly related to each dollar used to buy an e-balance, so, different from the US credit system, there is no way to "create credit" without paying for it. On the contrary, the credit is always lower than the money used to buy e-balance since the fess will drain some of it. So, no "making money out of nothing". When you get e-balance that you didn't pay for it, someone paid for it.
What the bloody uproar about?
Bashiok mention that they will come up with an idea to prevent previous player who had huge amounts of D2JSP money to get a head start on the game and also to prevent players from buying from third party websites.
I was sceptical at what they could possibly do to stop this.
Now that it been revealed, I think it the best possible solution.
Can you seriously think of a better solution?
AND PAY TO WIN IS NOT SOMETHING NEW. JOE BLOW JUST PURCHASED THE ABSOLUTE BEST ITEMS FROM WWW. AND YOU DIDNT EVEN KNOW ABOUT IT.
I personally think, if Diablo is truly going for the gaming experience, they can do better than the RMAH.
Surely if Blizzard is making money it will allow them to fund staff to monitor this kind of dodgy activity ingame.
And all this blizzard can do better. Please enlighten me with your better idea?
Simply putting it, you are completely wrong.
And I will not explain again why, if you would like to know, try to make an example and find out if the gold and money input is equivalent to the gold and money output you think will happen in this scenario.
There is a market price and to drive it up, reducing supply will work. It may not be so drastic as the example listed but regardless it is easily doable with a bit of money. If I am buying out the market at 10$ and I have to buy your one 900$ sword to keep the market price up it does not effect the avg. price so much if my volume is high, which I am guessing it would be. Even so if I wanted to retain market prices I would still be making a profit on your 900$ dollar sword. This increases YOUR gain for the sword, but it creates a very very messy economy.
Of course you wouldn't want to hold a manipulation for extended times but with MANY companies doing this, it can turn in to a very 'not so fun' environment. Market manipulation is abundant in the real world, in example it only takes an average 3 million USD to manipulate Sri Lankan markets, it is not just a problem with oil.