- Real Money AH
- Gold-based AH
- Will use both
- Won't use the AH at all
If you need more information on the Auction House System, you can check out PhrozenDragon's recent post. In last weeks' poll, we wanted to know what you all thought about Cooldowns, and it seems like the majority of you trust Blizzard's judgement with the 2-minute CD, as a whopping 45% of the votes went to it (with 1-minute coming in second, with 30% of the vote).
And this time around in the DiabloCast, we were allowed to talk about the Press Event! That in mind, we some pretty awesome PvP discussion (sorry!), as well as some talk on the new Rune and Skill systems, and what we expect from the Beta. If you missed the nineteenth episode, you can check it out here. Otherwise, the twentieth episode covered the following topics:
- Diablo 3 Press Event Visit
- The Auction House Explained
- Runic Revision?
- Skill Points Removal Fuels Game Controversy
- Activision/Blizzard's August Financial Conference Call
- It Ends with Diablo
- More Beta Buildup
If you've missed any previous episodes, check the archive!
Ha!
There's a guy on the Blizz forum that used $3k he got selling items from D2 at 13 to buy his first car at 16.
I think "light weekend money" is probably a lowball.
The large difference is now anyone can sell their items for money. Not only the people that have setup sites to do so. While it's possible some people will make a very large amount of money, it's not going to be effortless and there is really no way to tell as of yet.
Yes, if you devote 8+ hours a day to gaming a market, you can make money no matter what market you are in.
Sixen said he played the monk more this time around and he liked it. Why did he like it more? What feels different this time around? These are the question that pops in my mind. What you just told me is another generalization. I haven't played the game or seen the game in person, only in videos so I always asks people as much as possible their experience. Oh well, I guess I'll just hope I get into beta and I'll just share my own experience when that happens.
BTW, I can't find any pics online, but I remember the Grandfather use to go on Ebay for like $1400. Can anyone confirm this with evidence because I'm having a hard time finding facts to back it up.
yeah, the "not knowing what your rune is until you've already wasted it" is crap.
Agreed. Not to mention buying low in the gold AH and selling high in the RMAH. The evil American Corporatocracy has def taught me something.
I'm not sure of exact item values, but I am certain that some items sold for very large amounts early on in their lives in Diablo 2. Things like the ballista also sold for large amounts when they first came out. Sort of funny and also sad that later on, you basically couldn't even give them away to people.
But the main reason you will have an extremely hard time arbitraging items from the GoldAH to the RMAH is that RM has an intrinsic value which actually will keep it higher then gold. For example:
US 1$ = level 7 rune
level 7 rune in gold = (1$ x exchange rate) + intrinsic value of money
The intrinsic value is essentially the fact that real money is worth more then artificial currency (gold) I cannot buy an expansion pack, subscription or map (sc2 expansion) with gold. This will always make money cost more in gold then RM. I can go into more detail and really throw some more complicated inflationary and appreciation elements into it but long story short RM > Gold. The good news you can get real money without paying for it so +1 to that.
1- I don't really think people paid $1400 for items, if someone ever paid crazy ammounts of money, it was a very little minority.
2- The prices got high because only some people sold it in ebay and later some shops appeared to increase the demand, in D3 every player will be able to sell and, following what people are saying here, there will be lots of people selling their high-end items for money, then the demand will increase in a bidding system, the prices are expected to lower a lot
3- Due to the low price in RMAH, more people may prefer to sell items for gold sometimes, lowering even more the number of people that would by only in the RMAH due to the exclusively high-end only appearing there.
We will only know when the game comes out and is some months old, but I don't see any way people really making money comparable to a job, or even close to it.
As for taxes not sure how it is in the States but in Canada it has to be a lot before you "SHOULD" claim, key word is SHOULD. Basically unless your raking in a comfortable living there is no point worry about claiming anything. I would also argue the point until you cash out (blizz will get a cut from that) how can you claim anything? To apply tax on income generated you also need to apply tax reductions to losses generated, so unless blizzard provides the necessary tax papers for income gained/lost in a fiscal period based on all your transactions, there is no way to determine actual income unless you cash out.
Honestly if you can make a living from this game props to you cause it sure won't be fun. Item price will vary and likely be inflated for the first year at best. Eventually everything will drop except for the particular items deemed to be rare.
I agree with everything you said 3rd party sites charged a premium because it was only offered by a limited number of people. RMAH will allow everyone to sell hence reducing prices. The RM economy is based on how much money is pumped in by users, less the fees and withdrawals. The Irony is as the prices drop it encourages people to put money into the game to buy items super cheap which then raises the prices again. I am excited to hear what the fees will be since they will set the pace for pricing.
Anyone else think that first level 7 rune or super legendary tier 16-18 will sell for an absurd amount of money? or is anyone going to be that person who sells it/buys it for an absurd amount of money?
I hadn't even thought about taxes. I'm from Brazil, if we get a separated server for us in LA, RMAH will starve, our tax share here is about 40% on average.
So, every NA player who wants to paly without RMAH, come to the LA servers.
I wouldn't worry about it, only a few countries actual have any online tax revenue and like I said it optional to claim (its hard to prove and unless you make A LOT of money it isn't in your personal interest to do so). I think I over analyzed the situation and another user politely informed me that my approach to claiming online revenue was off, but all I wanted to say that its very pointless to worry about claiming revenue from this.
I liked that general idea as well, with a slight modification. I think the "Encyclopedia" or whatever should allow you to look at ability descriptions and then from there see what runes do to it.
So like:
Bash: hits a dude
indigo rune: bash now does...
obsidian rune: bash now does...
crimson rune: bash now does...
alabaster rune: bash now does...
golden rune: bash now does...
Re: taxation. For the USA it will probably be reported as either non-employee income on a 1099-misc, or perhaps a capital gain/loss on a 1099-b. And to all those planning to not claim it: Blizzard will be reporting all of these amounts to the IRS. If you don't make enough money to have to file a return, you'll be fine. If you already have income, you'd better report this too (blizz will undoubtably send out end-of-year-income statements, or post them on your paypal (or whoever) account or somewhere else).
The Brazillian government always finds a way to increase taxes. This year they've increased a tax for international transactions using a credit card to almost 10%. Steam games are one of the examples that are being taxed this way. And this is only one of many taxes that we pay in this kind of transaction.