DiabloFans

I would disagree. There are plenty of games (Diablo 2, Mass Effect and its sequel, the Elder Scrolls games, among others) that mostly contain PvE/PvM combat, but they easily last a very long time. If the story is interesting enough, and there are enough reasons to replay the game, it can continue on for as long as you want to keep playing it. Especially considering Blizzard seems to be hinting at post-release content, I don't see the games focus on PvE making it last any shorter than it would if it focused on PvP.

Bad luck for you. Not only did I rarely see bots, but when I reported them they were pretty quickly taken care of. Farming, and selling items for real money, is something that would happen either way. I fail to see how its at all game breaking now that Blizzard will hypothetically have much more control over the item trade.

Clearly you've never played WoW. Because the majority of what customer service does is answer and respond to complaints, most of which are about bots seeing as they made it extremely easy to report people. So their job is in large part banning bots/hackers.

As far as hacking, the only thing they'd ever be able to steal would be Blizzard currency that would only be able to be turned into cash if they hacked the relevant person's PayPal as well.

Well although it will definitely be the smallest beta, theres no reason for them to have told people to opt in for it unless they were going to give out more keys than the 1000 that they did at Blizzcon. It will be small, but only 1000 people is definitely way too small.

Also, if you live in a city you'll definitely see more than 1000 people. Just saying.

2) You can't ever socket that rune to another skill once you do socket it (big deal)

Well Jay Wilson said that not only is this only, as you pointed out, only a matter of discussion amongst the D3 team, but if this became a problem then they would implement something that allows you to 'wipe' a rune. Again, this system hasn't even been iterated upon. All it is is very early discussion, so obviously there are going to be holes in the proposed system.

Quote from kjolnir

Right right, the "everyone's going to do drugs anyway, so let's just make it legal so we can tax it and regulate it" argument. Didn't buy it then, and I don't buy it now. You don't 'solve' bad behavior by changing the rules and calling it 'normal' behavior. Cold hard fact is that players are now going to be allowed to buy in-game power from each other. That's a result of a failed attempt to make a meaningful in-game currency and economy, and nothing else.

Right, because just because you can buy items with money means gold is useless. Its not like you have to use it for everything else.

See, blizz got the reasons for the existence of D2JSP completely wrong. The forum gold and third party trading didn't come around because players wanted to make real money selling items - it came around because players just wanted to be able to SECURELY trade items, and had no other way to do it. Had a robust, in-game system been present with an in-game currency that had value, there would've been no need for D2JSP.

Oh, so you mean securely trading items like in WoW? Where theres a comprehensive AH and trade window? And still people who sell gold and items for money?

And everyone keeps trying to point out that the cheater AH is going to optional - news flash, no it ain't. Anytime two things which do the same thing exist, the market will choose one, and the other will fail. Don't believe me? Ever hear of betamax cassette tapes? What happened to records when cassettes and CDs came out? Familiar with the format war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD? One will win, the other will lose, and unless something really weird happens, the OBVIOUS conclusion is that the cheater AH will win, if for no other reason than it allows you to cash out real money. AT BEST, the gold AH will exist for all the lower-tier items that aren't worth the risk of a listing fee, and the cheater AH will be where all the desirable stuff goes. This is just basic economics 101, and any game designer who is going to be authoring a major release and wants a stable economy needs to understand these concepts.

Again, you will still need gold, and the main way to get large amounts of it will be the gold AH. It still has its place, both for that and for the people who don't want to use real money (aka a lot of people who have used up their free listings). If anything making people use real money to list something only discourages them from doing so and promotes trying the gold AH in any scenario where you need gold.

Yeah...let's think about that for a minute Jack. SOMEONE'S going to have to spend money in for you to earn it through selling it. If they don't...there'll never be any in the system. In fact, this system presumes and requires that there be a LOT of someones doing that. If everyone took the approach of "I won't put in my own money, I'll just soak up some of what's already there" then there wouldn't be any "already there" to begin with.

Of course there will be people who just use their credit cards and put cash on their account. I wasn't saying that wouldn't be the case. I was simply pointing out that there was a completely viable way to engage in the RMAH without ever doing so. Which there is.

It's called hyperbole, Jack - literary exaggeration to make a point. At level 24 you stop getting meaningful level milestones, and to me, that seems shallow and console-ish.

Quote from LarryNC

I love it. Blizzard epicly trolls the asian farmers by making them use their system and in return blizzard makes some money. I also like how players will make a few dollars too if they play alot, like me. Blizzard is brilliant.

Exactly. I don't necessarily know about the 'brilliant' part, but the fact of the matter is that every single last one of the concerns raised about the RMAH (abundance of farmers, etc) are things that will happen with or without a Blizzard-condoned cash AH. If anything, this could reduce the amount of farmers seeing as they aren't the ones who get to set their prices, which could end up meaning less profit for them. Either way, it will hardly promote it more than it already is in WoW and D2, and even if it does everyone (including Blizzard, who actually made the game and supports the servers) will have access to it, which means more profit for them and probably more content for us. And again, you won't even have to use money that wasn't gained through selling previous items if you use your free listings to gain money in the first place.

- A real-money cheater auction house. Great, destroy the integrity of accomplishing anything in-game by selling in-game power. Good call Blizz, way to renege and do something you said you'd never do.

Or make something that would have existed anyways more controlled and accessible by everyone. Which is what it actually does. And you all seem to be forgetting that these incredibly rare items have to drop for someone in the first place, and that person has to want to trade it, in order to be put up on the AH. One way or the other, people are going to be making cash profits off of items in Diablo III. I see no reason why it shouldn't be the general player base and Blizzard.

Furthermore, you seem to be completely missing the part where there is going to be a system where anyone can list a certain amount of items (or items during a certain day of the week) for free. As in, everyone will be able to engage in the cash AH without ever spending money that they didn't gain through buying other items.

- No more skill points. And the reason offered? "People save up their points or respec into something new when a better ability comes along." Well...so what? Why does that mean you have to just everything to everyone at certain level milestones? Now once you hit level 24, there is no reason to ever again open up your character sheet unless you're equipping something new.

Actually, you would have to open your character sheet every single time you switch a skill. The only difference between the current system and the old system is that you don't have to pay gold every time you reach a certain point.

- Unidentified rune color. I don't care that we won't know what the secondary stats are on the runes - but not even knowing what COLOR they are until you socket them and forever bind them to a skill? Total, utter, complete garbage. That FORCES you onto the AH for the runes you want, FORCES you onto the AH for the garbage you don't, and causes you to WASTE runes on skill A you REALLY wanted for Skill B.

And you're forgetting the part where its only a conversation about it, and it hasn't made it into the game yet.

I hope when the expansions come they'll add more modes to pvp, or perhaps on a big patch? Right now it seems only team deathmatch is up there????

They've readily said that they'll be adding content that doesn't make it into release through patches. That being said, they also pointed out that since PvP is already going to be so imbalanced, they want to limit the amount of modes so there aren't even more variables. I'm sure we'll at least get things like different arenas though, and a re-addition of the arena rounds seems like a possibility.

Real money auctions house = pvp not worth it (Yeah, i know, it would have been imbalanced anyway, but not THAT imbalanced). No pvp = I don't buy it.
See ya blizzard.

How would PvP not be worth it? Not only are you going to be matched with people on your level (which also takes into account what gear you have,) but, again, its not like just because theres a real AH these items are going to be in some insane amount of abundance. You're not going to be running into people decked out in the best gear left and right just because not you can buy it for real money. There isn't duping, but there is still the insane random drop rates like we saw in D2. And again, anyone can engage in the cash AH without ever spending any money that wasn't gained through selling their own items.

So even if the AH is somehow just this place where, if you have the money, you can get all the best legendaries for your character/build in .5 seconds (which it won't be, again, because of the random loot system), then, with one legendary drop for yourself, you'd be able to buy your own way to your own legendaries.

Well it also doesn't sound fun to just spam 'I win' skills. Not to mention that all of your skills, gear, runes etc will be more powerful. And you'll have powerful skills that aren't on a cooldown, but you'll just also have absolutely incredible screen clearing skills that are. At least as I understand it.

Well in PvE, from how the skills have been described, you'd probably just spend all your time saving up resource and using these awesome high level skills over and over again if they didn't have a cooldown. So in order to avoid that and make it more of a decision, you kind of need a cooldown.

Voted 5 minutes because I don't think there should be a maximum cooldown. If a skill is ultra powerful, it should have an appropriately long cooldown. I'd be perfectly fine with screen clearing skills as long as you have to be smart about using them because of their cooldown, and longer cooldowns just make it so that you have to be more and more intelligent with when to use the skill.

I would bet on it being an option seeing as the red outline has also been made an option, or being changed since then.

Yea it was a bit confusing because they talked about it as though it could be used freely across a lot of skills to make it so that PvP would be balanced without affecting PvE. Then they clarified that they wanted to use it as not often as possible, so that people wouldn't have to get used to two different skills along with all the rune effects. What you were saying wasn't entirely wrong, but saying theres two 'sets' makes it sound like its more drastic than it actually is.

Yes, I understand what you're saying, and I'm just clarifying that its not two 'sets' of skills for PvP and PvE in any way. Only things like stuns and snares will be changed, and they will still have the same essential function. There won't be two different functions for the skills, simply things like reduced times for stuns (although I guess, if you're going to be really technical, that could count as different functions in terms of programming).

http://www.diablofans.com/topic/24054-bashiok-on-skill-balancing-in-pve-and-pvp/

That post also points you to where the original quote came from (Open Q&A Blizzcon 2010, which I think is at the end of the Crafting Sanctuary panel). PvP wasn't even officially announced until the most recent Blizzcon, so beyond wanting to avoid griefing I don't think theres any official quotes from before then.