Auction House FAQ

Have questions about Blizzard's decision to use real money for player-to-player exchanges in Diablo III? You are not alone.

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Basically "Players nowadays are a bunch of spoiled kids, that only WANT WANT WANT without trying to do anything, and they are impatient while playing a hack and slash so instead of allowing RMT to do the job, we are doing it for them."

In before RMT exists anyway and is much cheaper. AND THE RMT WILL USE THE AUCTION SYSTEM BLIZZARD MADE

The irony...

Oh god, this cant go well. some kid will probable steal his moms credit card and fuck everything over,

Jim From Accounting:
Oh god, this cant go well. some kid will probable steal his moms credit card and fuck everything over,

Your most likely right. Who knows how many times that has happened in other games with similar features.

Oh great, I give it a week before something like this is introduced into WOW.

matoos:
Am I the only one who is concerned by the implications? Wouldn't this mean that the game requires you to be constantly online to be sure that you're not creating any items illegally? Doesn't this open a host of security concerns from a myriad of other directions?

The auction house likely doesn't work in single-player, I'm sure you can't bring items over from single-player, and in multi-player... Well... You're obviously going to need an internet connection.

EDIT: Apparently there'll be no offline singleplayer, this is not what I was expecting of Blizzard. =I

matoos:
Am I the only one who is concerned by the implications? Wouldn't this mean that the game requires you to be constantly online to be sure that you're not creating any items illegally? Doesn't this open a host of security concerns from a myriad of other directions?

Yep. You'll have to be always online to play Diablo 3. It's essentially an MMO now.

Edit: To poster above me, Diablo 3 doesn't have an offline single player component.

Haha, this better be a joke. This just in: D3 preorder canceled!

Am I the only one LOLOLOLing that Blizzard has now done what all the Doomsayers were predicting with the release of the sparkle ponies?

KeyMaster45:

Abedeus:
Basically "Players nowadays are a bunch of spoiled kids, that only WANT WANT WANT without trying to do anything, and they are impatient while playing a hack and slash so instead of allowing RMT to do the job, we are doing it for them."

In before RMT exists anyway and is much cheaper. AND THE RMT WILL USE THE AUCTION SYSTEM BLIZZARD MADE

The irony...

What's this RMT, someone care to elaborate?

Real money trading. When you are too lazy to get in-game money or farm the item, you pay someone for that item. Or to level up your character, or a skill, or something related to game, but always with real money in $.

No offline mode also pisses me off. I play Diablo 2 a lot these days, even after 10 bloody years, but only when my Internet is down. Because it's still an enjoyable game with mods. Ubisoft already noticed how much it hurts the sales...

Q: Is the currency-based version of the auction house optional?
A: Yes, the currency-based auction house is available as an option for players who wish to purchase or sell Diablo III items for real money. Players are also able to buy and sell items through the gold-based auction house, and they can trade items with each other as well through direct character-to-character in-game trading.

I hope these options are separated per server/realm, or else artificial inflation will occur.

Do Not Want

It was already happening in Diablo 2; I remember being told a Stone of Jordan was worth ~$10 or something.

Why not just make it official so you can better police it?

OverweightWhale:

Jim From Accounting:
Oh god, this cant go well. some kid will probable steal his moms credit card and fuck everything over,

Your most likely right. Who knows how many times that has happened in other games with similar features.

its one of the big things that i dont like about the PSN because of how easy it is to put a credit card on it, and all there going to be getting is dlc. this has the WoW effect that will happen to it where you get kids that just dont know when to stop and then only time will tell what will happen to them

KeyMaster45:

Abedeus:
Basically "Players nowadays are a bunch of spoiled kids, that only WANT WANT WANT without trying to do anything, and they are impatient while playing a hack and slash so instead of allowing RMT to do the job, we are doing it for them."

In before RMT exists anyway and is much cheaper. AND THE RMT WILL USE THE AUCTION SYSTEM BLIZZARD MADE

The irony...

What's this RMT, someone care to elaborate?

Bigsmith:
Oh great, I give it a week before something like this is introduced into WOW.

I wouldn't doubt that once Diablo 3 has been out for awhile they'd introduce this system to WoW. Both games are "item based" so I don't see why Diablo needed this more than WoW. This would have shut down all those damned gold selling spammers years ago as the players would have run them all out of business.

I'm not too sure what to think of this system. On the surface it sounds like a brilliant idea they should have done years ago but it bothers me that they take a cut from your auction money three times. Once to post it, another if you sell it, and a third time if you take it off your battle.net account. The first two are okay but that last one kinda irks me because it seems like they're penalizing you for not using the money on their products. They already got a cut from the posting and sale, why is a third cut needed to actually receive your money?

I don't really see this system moving to WoW. While both games are gear-focused, they work differently on some key points.

First, gear in Diablo is is random drops with random stats, which means that a really good drop will be sufficiently rare to consider selling if it drops for you, or to consider buying it if you stumble upon it on the AH. In WoW however, (worthwhile) gear has predetermined stats, and drops from fixed (and in current content short) loot tables, so you'll always know where to get better gear at a somewhat reliable rate.

Secondly, items in Diablo are not bound your character or account, allowing them to reenter the economy if needed. In WoW, once you buy or equip an item it is forever out the economy (not counting selling it as vendor trash).

Finally, I'd say (assuming Diablo 3's content works like in D1 and D2) progression is measured differently in WoW and Diablo (3). In WoW your gear progression is (or should be) a means to an end, and will be hard capped due the predetermined nature mention above, where the real progression is meassured in your progression through content.
On the other hand, in Diablo your character's progression is the main goal of the game. You'll most likely have cleared all content long before you reach max level, and then the main goal becomes to get those rare, super lucky drops with just the right stats.

My only real concern with this system is how they will prevent the gold AH from being flooded gold bought on the currency AH. On the other hand though, Considering that everyone will be grinding/farming in some form as they play (as opposed to an actual MMO where there often is a distiction between time spend farming and time spend progressing), a dedicated goldfarmer/trader shouldn't have too much of an advantage (i hope).

Jim From Accounting:
Oh god, this cant go well. some kid will probable steal his moms credit card and fuck everything over,

They probably will introduce a limit on the number of transactions to avoid this.

Still it is a legitimate concern.

Screw it I'm buying this game. Parents say "And how much did you earn winning that game of TF2?", "You need a job". Guess what, I HAVE a job. Earning epic loot and selling in Diablo 3 :P

Fleshy:

I don't really see this system moving to WoW. While both games are gear-focused, they work differently on some key points.

At the risk of making a low content post, I think Fleshy just made one of the most well thought out and meaningful posts I've seen around here in a long time. I just wanted to point that out since I always suspect that the probability of a given person reading a post on these forums is inversely proportional to its length and this post deserves attention.

The bottom line is, for end-game WoW players, the Auction House is basically useless for gear (crafting mats and pots are a different story).

Alexnader:
Screw it I'm buying this game. Parents say "And how much did you earn winning that game of TF2?", "You need a job". Guess what, I HAVE a job. Earning epic loot and selling in Diablo 3 :P

I really hate to be "that guy," but your competition is a force you can't compete against.

I just have 3 things to say to this:

"It's Business Time!"

ivansnick:

Jim From Accounting:
Oh god, this cant go well. some kid will probable steal his moms credit card and fuck everything over,

They probably will introduce a limit on the number of transactions to avoid this.

Still it is a legitimate concern.

I'm not really sure this is a legitimate concern. How would you handle it if anyone stole your credit card? A roomate? A neighbor? A girlfriend/boyfriend?

I don't see how this is any different than worrying that your kids will rip you off to buy songs from itunes, or crap from e-bay. If your kids are thieves, they are thieves. That's not Blizzards problem.

Q: Will that make me not buy the game?.

A: Not really, that decision was made when "no LAN" was announced. But it makes it even easier for me.

Q: But, but.. Diablo 3!

A: Yeah, sure, more like Torchlight 2. All the fun, all the features, none of the BS. And at half the price!

Gather:
Why not just make it official so you can better police it?

I guess the next step is selling high level characters, since there's also a side-market for that? Where does one draw the line? I feel that Blizzard should try and allocate even more resources to combat the real money market, not join it.

Personally, I hate this. It has no place within Diablo, and for me, ruins immersion.

This bit of news coupled with the online only single player, is making me doubt my purchase. Games, for me are goods, not services.

Jake Martinez:

ivansnick:

-Snip-

I'm not really sure this is a legitimate concern. How would you handle it if anyone stole your credit card? A roomate? A neighbor? A girlfriend/boyfriend?

I don't see how this is any different than worrying that your kids will rip you off to buy songs from itunes, or crap from e-bay. If your kids are thieves, they are thieves. That's not Blizzards problem.

true... I don't really have a responce to that except that Blizzard could make it easier for themselves if they simply made it so you could NOT trade equipment in multi-player.

Unless it is on a lan/wan. ALthough you are connected to Battle.net all the time they could sepearate it.

Finally if someone steals your credit card well your right it NOT Blizzards problem so they will probably state it in like page 24 of the EULA.

This idea is brilliant, but the announcement of no offline mode turned this game from a guaranteed sale to no sale.

This is fundamentally a single player game. If I don't want them to blizzard has no business knowing when I'm playing. This game went from a must buy to a wait until it is in the bargain bin.

paketep:
Q: Will that make me not buy the game?.

A: Not really, that decision was made when "no LAN" was announced. But it makes it even easier for me.

Q: But, but.. Diablo 3!

A: Yeah, sure, more like Torchlight 2. All the fun, all the features, none of the BS. And at half the price!

This. Exactly this. Thank god for options.

This has CoD syndrome all over it, where they're making really poor business/development decisions, but despite themselves, this will still incredibly well and reinforce all the wrong things. It hurts to watch.

ya I'm not buying Diablo 3, I won't support the actvision/blizzard Axis of evil.

I hope they ban chinese and korean IP's and give them their own servers or game version.

Bigsmith:
Oh great, I give it a week before something like this is introduced into WOW.

I wouldn't put it past them. I honestly don't know if this is the money grubbing tactics of Bobby Kotick and Activision, or if Blizzard is just this greedy and never went this far before because they needed to really build up a legion of mindless zombies that will follow them no matter how stupid their ideas are.

And this is a money grab for Blizzard, that's all. A fee for posting (if an item sells or not); a fee for selling; a fee for moving the money you get from your Battle.net account to your own bank or Paypal account. So many fees, I'd bet by the time an item goes from up for sale to your financial account, that Blizzard is going to take some 33-55% of the cut.

How do taxes take into account for these things? I know if Blizzard operates in a state like California, they'd have to count each transaction as a sale of their and pay taxes on it, right?

EDIT: Why is it when Ubisoft uses DRM it's "bad", but when Blizzard does it with requiring 'constant internet connnection', it's not a big deal? This is what I call hypocritical of the entire gaming community (reporters and players alike).

Gold farmers will annihilate the $ pricing on the AH to the point where you would not consider selling your rare axe for money.

escapador:

Gather:
Why not just make it official so you can better police it?

I guess the next step is selling high level characters, since there's also a side-market for that? Where does one draw the line? I feel that Blizzard should try and allocate even more resources to combat the real money market, not join it.

Personally, I hate this. It has no place within Diablo, and for me, ruins immersion.

This bit of news coupled with the online only single player, is making me doubt my purchase. Games, for me are goods, not services.

In the article it already said that they're looking at eventually adding character sales to the AH.

From the top of page 3:
"Q: What items can be traded in Diablo III?
A: Nearly everything that drops on the ground, including gold, can be traded with other players directly or through the auction house system. Aside from certain quest items, there will be very few (if any) items that will be "soulbound" to your character and therefore untradable. We are also planning to allow players to buy and sell characters in the auction house at some point in the future and will have more details to share on that at a later date."

Well, this is going to create the exact situations I have said will be the downfall of gaming. The moment real life money has a direct impact on game balance is the moment gaming goes downhill. Good items are going to end up on the RMAH for the most part and the in game currency one will have crap.