Hey guys, new member.
So, I am on team Blizzard with this entire update, and I shall now discourse on why every single thing they did was genius.
First, some Economy 101, since plenty of posters here seem to have acquired the HURR-odric scroll after bumping their head on the Tree of Idiots. The RMAH is ingenious for a few very specific reasons, a few of which have been touched on by previous posters. First, since you can sell gold, you can acquire money to spend in the RMAH, which means you just spent gold to get something on the RMAH. Second, those of you who think the RMAH is not ethical will (according to your ethics) put anything you want to sell in the AH on the Gold AH, which means that there will be plenty of good items on the Gold AH. If your ethics are so strong that you don't like the RMAH, then I'm sure we can trust you to not try and sell there. Third, this puts a value on Gold, so you know what you have. Sweet, finally.
Further, you guys need to understand economics on a deeper scale if you're going to attack Blizzard for bringing real world economy and grafting it into this virtual universe. In particular, you need to understand the ebb and flow of money coming in, the money sitting around, and the money going out. Let's say that out of one million players, fifty thousand buy SOMETHING in the RMAH, whether it be 50 cents for basic gloves, or 50 dollars for a sweet-axe axe. That's fifty thousand multiplied by the average expense that was just put into the D3 economy. Some went into the real-world pockets of the sellers, and some went into Blizzard e-balance. Now, assuming that another four-hundred and fifty thousand players are okay with selling gold for e-balance and buying on the RMAH with e-balance, they're just recycling the money put in the economy already. What does this mean? If there's a total e-balance amongst the five-hundred thousand players of $5000 (obviously low, but just for example, let's roll with that amount) then people are just shifting that $5000 around to acquire things that they want/need. So eventually, our collective e-balance will begin to move into real-world pockets, but more e-balance will come in from more cash expense into the game. What this means is that our Diablo economy will function much like the real-world economy. The more cash there is in the system, the less it's worth. Conversely, the less cash there is, the more it's worth. What this means for Diablo economy is that if everyone is buying into the RMAH with cash, we have more cash in the system, which means each e-balance dollar is worth just a little less because it's easier to come by. This is a GOOD THING. It's a good thing because we also have Gold that has a comparable exchange rate to our e-balance cash. If cash is valuable, gold is valuable, and if you can acquire gold, you can acquire cash, assuming you sell. What I'm getting at here is simply this: for every ONE player that spends their real money (buying power, as ragers call it) we get a stronger gold economy for all of us, and fewer of us will get scammed out of our transactions because we know what gold is even worth.
Long story short, people, the RMAH is not going to beat out the Gold AH. It's going to become the supplementary force that makes people like the AH altogether. I don't even think it makes sense to think of it as RMAH and Gold AH so much as a single AH with two ways to pay. Your gold can be spent in the RMAH just as your cash can be spent in the Gold AH, thanks to the possibility of currency exchange and e-balance.
*whew*
As for PVP, who cares if people buy godly armor and go PVP? You'll never play against them unless your armor compares, so what does it even matter? "Oh, but I spent time, and they spent 5 minutes." Well good, then you should be able to beat them on the pure merit of knowing how to play, and they'll see what all their godly spends were worth them.
As for skill points, awesome. Brilliant even. So what, you're sad that you won't feel different from other players with Whirlwind? How is this better than D2 when you were fighting other Barbarians who beefed out Whirlwind there? At least this time around, you can be a whirlwind/leap barb while they're a whirlwind/berserker barb. You're different from every other barb because you have 6 ways to play! In PVP, I bet we'll see a never-ending ebb and flow where you are Barb 1 and you get beat by Barb 2, so you shift to have his skillset, and now you get beat by Barb 3, so you switch to that skillset, and suddenly, you get beat by someone who's playing Barb 1's skillset again. And people are honestly crying about the ability to switch out often? So what? Are YOU going to switch out often? If you are, then it was a good move. If you're not, good on you, you found a playstyle that works for you, and that is GOLDEN. That's Blizzard's goal anyway. They don't intend for every player to switch skills between each scenario. People are going to use what they want to use. People want identity, and if they can have the freedom to perfect that on the fly, they'll do it, but they'll still lock into what works for them best. This is aided even further by the new (possible) rune system. And speaking of the rune system...
The Rune system is awesome! So what if you don't know what you're getting? You certainly didn't hate unidentified items, did you? That's all this is. If you try it and don't like it, well, better luck next time. That's how good item finding has always worked in Diablo. And if you have to think carefully about what skill you're going to toss a rune into, well then you're not going to be switch out your skills that often are you? You gotta know what you're going to use so you know what skill is worth throwing that oh so precious level 7 rune into. This reinforces identity, it reinforces the treasure hunting we've always enjoyed in Diablo, and it reinforces the idea that just because that Barb has the same skillset as you, it doesn't mean you're identical, because his Whirldwind is alabaster while your whirlwind is something else entirely. Trust me, there's no such thing as "better" or "worse" runes for each skill, because when you compare any change you get from runes to the changes OTHER skills get with whatever runes they get may make what you currently THINK is a bad change into the perfect fit for your build. Essentially, everyone will have different preferences for runes, and I think this random method is going to help us all explore that a little better, which will have us playing different styles for months -- nay, years -- to come.
THANK YOU BLIZZARD! I can't wait to get my hands on this and ruin my life by only ever playing it!
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