Blizzard reveals Real Money Auction House Fees Pages PREV 1 2 3 4 5 | |
I think this is the ultimate test of stupidity on gamers. If a player is willing to pay $250 for an in-game item, then they deserve to have their money suckled from them. A fool and his money are soon parted. | |
I don't care about the issue enough to keep arguing about it - Blizz has changed it for the better at some point - but wow, you're a thick fella, aren't you. I'll repeat, incentivizing item selling directly fucks with the game's economy. There is no way to be clearer about this. It's partly analogous, and that's it.
You haven't established how not having real money in the auction house will lead to any of this. You're just flapping your hands. I assume the hardcore servers' economies are doomed?
They are part of the equation, but a much smaller one than they are when this is facilitated in the game itself. I haven't argued otherwise. | |
"Incentivizing" (through legalizing and taxing and regulating) tobacco selling directly 'fucks' with our economy too. In a positive way. Would that they did the same with drugs. By the way, Blizzard wants people to buy and sell items. But it is not giving you any incentive to buy and sell items that didn't exist before ($$$ is the reason to do so, just as before), if anything it takes away money from sellers in the form of a tax. That is the OPPOSITE of an incentive. Incentivizing is not the correct word. Ease of use is, through legalization and an official forum for doing it, hence it should be replaced by "facilitating".
The hardcore market will attract much of the scamming and duping. Who knows, maybe HC players will have greater fortitude to resist buying and selling, but I highly, highly doubt it. The HC market should have a RMAH too, it's not in solely for PR reasons that will quickly prove hollow. We have direct empirical evidence of the failure of "war on RMT" (zero tolerance! ban botters/hackers/scammers! blah blah) again and again. At this point, your purely theoretical "flapping your arms" as you put it, is just that, purely theoretical. That way has been tried, it's failed repeatedly, and it doesn't work. Not just in the real world with drugs, even if you prefer to ignore it, but also in the world of RMT itself. "smaller part of the equation" or not, it was enough to ruin D2 closed ladder, and severely affect WoW. So much for zero tolerance. | |
Way to drop another wall of text after I said I don't care about the issue and said I don't have as much of a problem with it as I may sound. I want you to explain just how severely WoW was affected. Played it for 4 years, the only effects that were really felt were the random whispers you'd get once a week or so. Stop with the bloody hyperbole, will you. The thing that most cite as "ruining" D2, duping, will simply not exist unless Blizzard fails spectacularly with their server infrastructure. And by the way, I said you're flapping your arms not on this whole issue, but on the part where you keep implying that without real money in the auction house the economy is facing inevitable death. | |
Sure, if they take 15% out of a large transaction they will make a wad of cash for doing nothing. However they also enable their customers to make money using their game. Online auction sites like eBay got listing fees based on your selling prices, but not as high. however a huge problem with games like Diablo 3 is that people will trade in game items for cash even if it's an actual feature or not. A lot of people gets ripped off and never see the item they paid for nor the money they spent on it. Sure, 15% is asking too much, but I'd rather see them getting 15% than being scammed out of 100%. | |
Jesus, ever heard of hacking? A problem that at one point a WoW account was more valuable to a hacker than credit card theft? The reason logging into a WoW account uses more security than logging into my bank? Black market item sales are both a huge vector for hacking and a huge incentive, because the business is FAR more profitable when it is banned- artificial restriction of supply. Whispers once a week or so? They've had to entirely cripple trial accounts, and revise the global chat rules so you can only send messages twice every 10 seconds or so. At one point you couldn't log into your city without seeing floating hackers advertising your latest gold selling site. It's impossible to have a real discussion on this when one party is so entirely ignorant of what happened to the D2 economy, WoW (whispers once a week. amazing.), and MMOs in general. The "zero tolerance" method fails. In the real world. Repeatedly. | |
I personally have nothing against the RMAH, since it can hurt the 3rd party diablo trading sites like d2jsp. I'm pretty sure that d2jsp is going to have much less diablo 3 trading and people will be using it for either diablo 2 or maybe there are still some services that can be done on it. Honestly, these kind of sites were no good really. Unless you are anal about competing with other players (in a game like D3 I don't think it should be an issue to be honest) you probably won't hold much to the RMAH. | |
Somehow I doubt the demand is strong enough to make it generate enough income for that. | |
Maybe I'm lucky. I doubt it. Been playing WoW for 4 years, something like 2 of them I've spent raiding the shit out of the game. I had something of a grasp on the community, and there was no sentiment anywhere that gold farmers were little more than a nuisance. Unless the situation radically changed from Cataclysm onwards, severely affected my ass. Now, I don't really have much experience with D2. So yes, I'm pretty ignorant on that front. Played through it a couple of times, fiddled around on hell and that's about it. But the fact alone that you keep spouting this borderline doomsday hand-wringing nonsense is enough to make me dubious of your claims. Maybe it wasn't ruined, the same way WoW was in no way severely affected. The reason I said you haven't read what I said a few posts back, by the way, is because I'm not really arguing the bad things that happen outside the game. I was pointing out tangible in-game disadvantages before you jumped my ass with this bunch of non-sequiturs. Bad things happen, I get it, but you don't get to pretend like the other side has nothing of value to say. | |
With the exception that they force you to play online regardless of your intention to use the real-money auction house... yeah... that's called force. Can we just all agree that Blizzard (Activision doesn't help) is a bunch of greedy bastards. Whether you like that or don't, whether you're okay with it or not, I don't care. Let's just agree, they're greedy bastards. Also? How does 15% equal one dollar every time. Was the post unclear did I miss something because 10 percent of a dollar is a dime. Ten percent of two hundred is twenty. Why the percent but a flat rate? | |
They don't enable their customers to do anything. People have been buying a selling stuff in D2 for a long time. And the players created the demand before blizzard even considered it. So, the players didn't need blizzard at all. Blizzard is just now making it in house, so its secure to be sure, but at a high cost. And youd rather pay the extra for it to be more secure. Thats fine. And I actually agree with you. I would gladly pay a higher rate for it to be 99.999999999% secure. But 15% is a ridiculous fee and is going to make a TON of people go black market. | |
When you sell an item on TF2, an item that you yourself approved and created, Valve still takes a cut. And that's an item you CREATED. | |
Relax. I'm a capitalist and businessman, and I say you're a little paranoid. The reality is there are item and gold farming companies who get their items through hacking, lying and stealing. That's how they make their money - spamming email, hacking accounts, stealing gold/items and selling them on. What we have here in Diablo III is a trial for a system which makes this process legitimate, where people who want to make their livings farming and selling items can now do so legitimately - without hacking and ruining somebody else's game. It's not some capitalist-pig super-greed system, it's an idea to curtail a serious plague that's been latched to online games since their inception. EVE Online did it with massive success with PLEX - look it up. | |
You know, I am going to say that after this post I agree with you completely. If they had made it more like 3-7% that would be acceptable, but you're right. At this pricing it might drive people to go to the black market and get scammed out of their money anyway. | |
Yeah that'd be great having your money stored in battle.net... if it wasn't hacked so often Seriously I don't know anyone who has not had theirs hacked once, mine was even hacked when it wasn't in use for months. But lets put our profits there, great idea | |
Hi. Never been hacked. Authenticator. Get one. | |
Well, the thing here is that it has competitive aspects, and with a real money auction house nobody is going to want to sell anything decent for in game currency. At a certain point I'd imagine this will become a situation where your pretty much going to have to pay other people for drops to remain competitive if your not playing the game constantly. I also wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard winds up having shills with overpowered equipment spawned by the company selling constantly through the market for even more money. This is to say nothing of what I've heard about unique items (ie 1 for the entire game) and the kind of garbage that is doubtlessly going to create. I'm willing to see what happens, but I oppose the practice on principle and hope it backfires. I also think that goverments, at least in the US, should prevent the sale of virtual items for real money even in an indirect fashion. Without going into a giant rant on that subject, I will say I've held that opinion since "Second Life" launched. In "Second Life" there was more justification given that people were basically selling artworks as opposed to "random drops" which can in theory be created and controlled by a third party. I also confess to some concern over addictive behavior. See, I don't feel that there is inherantly a problem with becoming addicted to something relatively harmless like video gaming. However when real money gets involved in a game like this it CAN become harmful, we've already seen people getting themselves into trouble with Microtransactions, and really with what Blizzard is planning I think this could be worse for a lot of people. I've already heard people on the internet talking about how they want to focus on playing Diablo 3 professionally and supporting themselves with cash transactions. Given the way this works, it's about as rational as some dude deciding he wants to sell his house and take his whole family to live off the land and prospect for gold... in modern 21st century America. To me I think baiting addicts should be a crime, even a relatively harmless addiction becomes something else when someone decides to use it as a handle for exploitation. On some levels I think this is similar to a guy taking two syringes full of heroin and one full of poison and dangling them in front of a strung out druggie as a way of playing Russian Roulette. Except in this case I don't think most of the people that are going to bite were dysfunctional to begin with, but something like this cash AH has a chance of making them so. Time will tell, here I will admit I probably am overreacting, I just don't care for it, and really I saw things like this coming when Linden started to run their little experiment and how that was turning out for a while. I'll also say the money laundering and currency transfer possibilities here are epic. We had people exploiting Lindens and RL currency to sneak sums of money around under the table and do currency transfers and such, given what some people have paid for virtual items (Project Entropia, a certain D2 auction for a bow, Second Life Real Estate, some of the wierded deals in EVE with people allegedly trading real money for territory), I could easily see a community like this getting to the point where you could say translate say Yen into epic lewts, and then sell the lewts for dollars in the US market to get money into the country covertly, Blizzard takes it's laundering fee (which is what it would be) and theny you've got a pile of bribe money or whatever else that isn't on the radar. | |
EDIT: July 24th Time has proven me correct. Is this the future you want for gaming? To turn it into a goddamn casino? Grind is the enemy of gaming. Never more have I been sure of that. Wanting to make money is one thing, but this goes beyond providing an experience for mere money; it's exploitation. Insidious exploitation. And so many gamers enable it to not only occur, but to thrive. IF YOU CANNOT COMPREHEND WHAT I'M SAYING, READ THIS: "GRIND" IS NOT LEGITIMATE GAMEPLAY I don't understand why people are so quick to dismiss skinner gameplay under the guise of "opinion" or "preference". This isn't a matter of preferring vanilla to chocolate ice cream, or Ford to Dodge, it's a matter of psychology. The effects of Random Reward are well known and documented. It's hard science, not mere "opinion". Getting people to press the proverbial button in hopes of receiving their pellet. "Oh, it's just a matter of preference." And again, I see people wielding "It's fun to earn the right to the gear" OK. Just stop. Stop and think about what you're really doing there. Comparing playing a game to a workout? Really? What have you really done? You've incremented some numbers in a database and you have done so in a way that everyone can easily do. There is no real difficulty or personal trial involved beyond the capacity of fighting boredom. But lets attack this idiocy from another angle, the controversy of "botting". WHY IS THAT? *HOLD IT!* But I already hear you thinking of counterpoints: Yes, but what KIND of effort? +The Aimbot in Counterstrike is a cheat, and CAN DO EVERYTHING THE PLAYER CAN DO BETTER THAN THE PLAYER EVER COULD. This is a "cheat". -The bot that farms gold in WoW CAN DO EVERYTHING THE REGULAR PLAYER CAN DO, AND NOTHING MORE. The only benefit that the second type of bot provides, is the ability for the player to progress as if he were playing all the time. It does not provide them any edge in execution, because the bot is limited by the character's stats. Arguing that the bot is "unfair" because it provides a "time advantage" is fucking ludicrous if you also try to argue that "grinding" is fun. I'll show you how: If you believe that grinding is fun, then logically YOU SHOULD NOT CARE ONE WHIT HOW SOMEONE ELSE PLAYS THE GAME. If you accept that the argument is PURELY SUBJECTIVE, then you MUST accept that different players want to progress at different rates. Different people put different time commitments into the game, no? So, let me posit this question: Do botters take away or otherwise interfere with your ability to grind (and thus have fun)? If cannot, then your point is moot. It's the same logic why nobody should complain about cheats in single player games; it impacts nobody but the person employing the cheats. "But it does impact me! It hurts the in-game economy!" 1) Actually, it helps the in-game economy. Supply and demand. Increased supply from more efficient sources DRIVES PRICES DOWN. Unless one entity owns ALL of the bots, and that simply won't happen if the game is popular enough to be worth playing. 2) This "economy" is built upon a faulty basis. The value of an item is directly proportional to the product of how difficult it is to acquire X how badly it is needed/desired. Therefore, defending grind in this manner is like defending a famine to keep the price of bread high. Therefore, the INSTANT that botting even becomes a more practical option in the game than playing it normally, is the moment that game has ceased to provide a legitimately engaging experience. And then people will still cling to their "You just don't like it, so you're bashing it! You don't understand!". Of course I fucking understand. I understand implicitly. I probably understand it better than most of you. And it's BECAUSE I understand it so well that I that I don't like it! I played Diablo 2 for the better part of a decade, and tried a multitude of MMORPGs. No, it's people who wield such fucking ludicrous rhetoric like "It's just subjective" who do not understand. They cannot see that they're being manipulated by Skinner Box Logic, because they're addicted. And while they're addicted, they think they're enjoying themselves. And yet, so often, they will sit there and sigh, eyes half-open, hunched over in their seat at their keyboard and mouse, doing the same shit over and over; boss runs that they have long since memorized and mastered in hopes of getting that rare drop or reaching that next mathematical milestone. Not having fun because it has all become nothing more than a routine. The Diablo 3 auction house is Blizzard turning it all over to the player and legalizing the drug as it were while being the primary supplier. It provides a benefit in the form of turning grind into potential cash. But the cost is great: If the payout is real money, and the bid is time, then why not just find a job?
It should make no difference. From a business point of view, yeah. It's a dirty way of making money, but that's what business cares about first and foremost.
Aye. I'll quit gaming if *every game* I want to play involves an auction house like this. Why? Because the "Auction House" is a "solution" to the problem of the Gold Farmer Market (and related scammers). (That's what gives those items any real world value to start with: competition/PVP creates demand, and grind drives that demand up by limiting supply. How bitterly ironic, that the in-game "economy" so many players make such a fuss about protecting exists only because of the incredible amount of tedium and busywork required.) To ask for more games to employ this, is to ask for more grind; which is something we should be striving to move *away from* in gaming. Not enacting more of! Eliminate tedium and busywork, create more actual content, or create new ways to enjoy the same content without it becoming tedious boring busywork. | |
Addressing your concerns in no particular order, here I go:
Yes, I do, because that was all done within the game, within the game's rules. When you buy a PLEX item from the EVE Online store, you can either use them to add game time to your account, or sell them on the in-game market. One should buy them from the store while docked at the right station to sell them at, because transporting them is a really stupid idea. If we're thinking of the same example, somebody bought thousands of dollars of PLEX's - then transported them. All were destroyed. This keeps happening - people destroying and stealing them off each other ENTIRELY WITHIN GAME RULES AND TACTICS - and serves only to push the lesson that you just don't transport them out of the station. They spawn in your hangar in the station you're at, so the idea is to go to the right station first, THEN buy them from the store, and do whatever with them. If the example you're thinking of is people hacking into each other's accounts to steal currency to pay for the PLEX's, that just doesn't happen. It's never been reported. Farming for items and currency won't stop. Ever. And the best gear won't be found entirely through 'who's got the fattest wallet' - ultimately, SOMEBODY has to commit the time and employ the skill to procure the item in the first place. | |
That would be an interesting statistic to see, what the average transaction on the AH was. I would hope it was only $10 or so but you never know how nuts people are willing to get over virtual items. Specially with Blizzard, just look at their store and the amount of cash they print with the virtual pets / mounts. | |
Well... on the bright side, the In-game currency's going to have value again! | |
Already was of the mind to skip D3. The more I learn about these... 'fun'... elements, the more I'm convinced it's going to go from a 'skip till there's a nice sale or some such' to 'How much was a preorder for Torchlight 2 again?' situation. | |
Well real auction houses typically take about 15%. You can sell your things without them, without even doing anything illegal or breaking a EULA, yet they are still in business.
You're dreaming. Only a small minority of players will buy stuff, everyone else will be selling. It doesn't matter what items are in the game or how rare they are, the buyers will not spend enough for the average player to make $60 back, or even $5 back. $5 will be your whole account after playing for a year. But it is arguably a good thing. It puts the professional gold sellers out of business. So much less botting, account hacking, credit fraud and spambots. | |
Huh. I didn't realize you could earn real money from the Diablo 3 AH. I thought you could only earn money to be put toward things in the Blizzard store. So... if you can actually earn spending money from this game, I wonder if it's considered taxable income... If it is, I can only imagine the RAAAAAGE from the 12-year old players' parents when they get bumped up to a new tax bracket. Or audited. | |
Here the clarification as some people are still confused on the RMAH: All sales on the RMAH go into the sellers Battle.net account. Unknown(Probably no fee) to transfer money from Paypal or Bank Account to Battle.net account. | |
Diablo is all about finding awesome loot, at least for me. Anyone who uses this will just be ruining the game for themselves by paying for a major part of the gameplay. Go ahead. | |
No, in a way, it's not. Because they chose to add this feature in place of the offline single player that was promised to its playerbase from the beginning. It's not "entirely optional". The Auction House and Always-On DRM was forced onto its playerbase. You can avoid using the Auction House, certainly, but the effects of its existence have directly impacted (and in my opinion, damaged) the game. Ergo, I won't be buying it. | |
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It might not be relevant, regardless the original thing I quoted irked me because it implied that it was acting out of those motivations, which I think is highly improbable.