This, is one of the many features that us Diablo players have been rather skeptical about. In a rather lengthy post, Bashiok explained why BoE will be in Diablo III, and why it is an effective way to manage the economy. The following will be a highly condensed version, but see here if you wish to read the all of the related blue posts.
Official Blizzard Quote:
I want to downplay or even kill this notion now. We do NOT need to drop items more frequently because of Bind on Equip. Let's not kid ourselves here - the economy in Diablo II is broken. The "fix" for this broken economy is to, every so often, wipe it clean. All characters and items are swept into the trash bin that is non-ladder and we have a pristine economy ready to welcome trading with open arms... until it turns to crap and the whole cycle begins again. This wonderful dystopia also comes with incentives to play there (rankings/unique items/etc.) and it all works to help create a somewhat stable economy. For a little while.
While the Diablo II economy was fun for a while, we have to admit, Bashiok is right. The economy in Diablo II was horribly broken, do you remember having the first wave of Shakos worth several high runes, then plummet down to a Pul rune about a month into the ladder reset?
It is this kind of flooding that BoE will be preventing. Without BoE, stockpiles of the highest items can be amassed, and freely traded between characters. While this does allow you to amass wealth, it does not keep a stable economy, as it will be flooded with items, with no way to remove them from the economy aside from losing them, or ladder resets.
With BoE, we'll see a much more stable economy. This is, of course, because items will be regularly removed from the trading pool once bound to a player. This will also force us to put a lot more thought into our builds, we will have to plan them out, and figure out exactly what we want to bind to our characters. So for those of you who think that Diablo III will be "carebeared", think again, BoE has got your back.
Official Blizzard Quote:
We could have drop rates in Diablo III with the exact same frequency as Diablo II, and by making the highest items BoE, create a far more stable economy.
To me, this made perfect sense.
Most often, the highest items were the ones that drove the economy. This was because they were the rarest, and in the highest demand for builds. With BoE, that demand will stay high, since the economy will not be saturated with items several months into the ladder.
Official Blizzard Quote:
But just adding in BoE items obviously isn't going to totally fix things all by itself. It's important to note that BoE items are not the one stop fix for all economic issues. It's going to take a lot of different attacks from a lot of different angles to ensure we have a nice stable economy. Bind on Equip items are just one of those attacks.
This has me quite hopeful for the economy in Diablo III. Honestly, we can easily guess that not much thought went into stabilizing the economy in Diablo II, aside from the ladder resets, and the occasional rust storm to weed out all those duped items.
However, in Diablo III, not only will we be getting what Diablo II began, but we'll be seeing all sorts of new methods of stabilization. BoE just happens to be one of the crowd, and I'm quite excited to see what else they've got in store for us.
That makes sense. As I understand it, quest items really aren't something you'd equip anyway, so there's no effect on the economy. Likewise, since everyone has the opportunity to get a quest reward, those could be BOP without any adverse effect.
Indeed... but how would they stop maphacks? easily one of the most popular "hacks"?
A smart move, but it also screws over those of us who like to play LAN.
Honestly though, I've got a feeling that this will encourage hacking of a different type. Surely to god there will be a modder out there who will sift through the Diablo III files and find a way to reverse engineer in some LAN.
How do they stop it? Well, my guess is as good as anyone's, but I think there's one thing they can do to help a ton: make the content in between bosses more interesting and more relevant. In D2, it was all about boss fights and boss runs. Whether the boss du jour was Diablo, Mephisto, Pindle or Baal, it always seemed like the content in between was completely irrelevant. When that's the case, maphack is going to be immensely popular because the content it allows you to skip is just a barrier to the real meat of the game.
One way to do that would be to assign a high drop rate to a random mob or two within the map. That way, the mf opportunities are spread more evenly throughout the game. For instance, the boss is in a fixed location within the dungeon. The boss has a high drop rate for good items. However, a randomly generated mob or two also has a higher drop rate within the dungeon. If this is the case, a player or a party has the incentive to hunt through the dungeon instead of teleporting past everyone directly to the boss. If the player teleports past everything a maphack is a necessity. If the player has incentive to hack and slash through everything, it isn't as important.
That doesn't stop private realms from popping up.
As for the hacking thing, there will always be hacks, you will never ever prevent people from hacking. Look at DRM, as tight as they make DRM the pirates still find a way around it.
We will still be able to trade, we will just have to save up items, which is what most people did anyways. It wasn't often that you saw somebody going into a trading game with only their currently worn equipment to trade. Instead, they would have a stockpile of items that they would use to trade.
Thus, we will still be able to trade items, just not the ones we equip. Just one of the many ways to take items out of the economy to keep supply and demand regulated.
I think you're right that boss runs will always be popular. At the same time, it would be nice to have some appeal to other areas of the game as well. The balance was way off in D2.
This isn't really applicable because its just completely different. The reason no one would want it is because there were so many other ones available so why take one that was personalized? Also I think you may be confused as to how many items will be BoE. Blizzard came out and said it would only be the elite high end items.
Again you won't really have a problem with out-leveling BoE items as they will be the best ones you can get, can't go up from there
Where do app for that job! =)
This is pretty insane, though. The more stuff you move online, the more stress on their servers.
This isn't just a bunch of servers that players can host. Blizzard having to handle that much additional crap to send to players for hacking prevention only seems pretty insane.
I'm not saying the solution makes no sense, but its a costly one.
With all the piracy n' shit that goes on, it seems a logical step.
Grrrrr, thinking about this kinda thing really makes me want to find these genetic defectives who create these problems, beat them into a semi-conscious state and them throw them screaming from an airborne helicopter.