You know there will be a SC2-esque cliffhanger. They said there are already plans for an expansion.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Diablo 3 Beta [Beta withdrawal underway!]
- Thread starter maniac-kun
- Start date
- Status
You know there will be a SC2-esque cliffhanger. They said there are already plans for an expansion.
I'm not a huge Diablo 2 fan, but the D3 beta was pretty decent, minus Error 37 or whatever it was.
This real money auction house is going to fuck peoples lives up more than any game before it. People will drop out of college, quit jobs and neglect friendships all in a chase to farm rare drops to sell. And the future addition of PVP (as far as I know?) will only make this worse.
Blizzard is going to make another fortune.
This real money auction house is going to fuck peoples lives up more than any game before it. People will drop out of college, quit jobs and neglect friendships all in a chase to farm rare drops to sell. And the future addition of PVP (as far as I know?) will only make this worse.
Blizzard is going to make another fortune.
WonkyPanda
Member
Or, conversely, allow a lot of people to sit back and simply use the market place to get "good" without having to invest time to farm. Should be a fine study to see how this pans out.
FrontalMonk
Banned
I have the feeling that once the pvp arenas come in, you'll see people with a lot of bought gear, but that skill will separate the men from the boys, so to speak.
My only concern is that if they put a cap on your battle.net balance of $250.00 then you can't ever sell something for a higher price than that. Doesn't make a lot of sense seeing that some of the rarer items in end game will most likely be worth more than that. Some of the current restrictions may drive people to third party sites.
You realise that this is not some big new never-seen-before development, right? People were selling items and accounts for real money in D2 as well. Your post is a hugeeeee over exaggeration.
WonkyPanda
Member
Yet, I still think it's a fair assumption. There's a lot of risk with those secondary markets, and then you have the problem of those transactions being against the ToS (although, who knows if it was ever enforced).
I think the main contention is that: now that there is a perfectly legitimized, accessible, and solicited marketplace, the number of people doing these transactions will be far greater than the "underground" markets of before. Before, you had D2 items, ebay, and other sites that didn't consolidate or place things directly in your face the same way that the blizzard marketplace will do. Only time will tell. You may be right and this may have next to 0 impact on the way this market affects the game.
I'm well aware of D2JSP and other similar sites. This is slightly more accessible, and done on the massive Blizzard scale.
I do agree that the $250 cap is a good idea.
FieryBalrog
Member
I think it will definitely have an impact. The idea that "oh, everyone was doing this anyway therefore it has 0 impact" is incorrect. Legalization will definitely affect how people work with the system.
However, I think it might have a net positive impact; we will see ourselves of course. Trading was by far the most fun I had in D2, and I'm really excited to see what happens.
However, I think it might have a net positive impact; we will see ourselves of course. Trading was by far the most fun I had in D2, and I'm really excited to see what happens.
WonkyPanda
Member
What do you think would be the net positive impact? Less people getting gipped from shady dealings and an actual market place with true competition and supply/demand factors?
EDIT: That's what I would think at least.
FieryBalrog
Member
When D2 launched, people freely sold items on ebay, even well after LoD had launched. It was actually really easy, if definitely not as streamlined and accessible as the current system. A friend of mine made a good $500 just selling a handful of uniques in high school, and I sold 2 decent items for $35 ish each.
sorijealut
Member
Ahh, thanks for the explanation!
80% unlock on reveal site.
Dev diary 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=J-zZRhgnnRM
Dev diary 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=J-zZRhgnnRM
FieryBalrog
Member
Yes. Less hackings, less viruses, less stolen credit cards. A huge amount of the CS problems in WoW are either self-inflicted (people going to super shady websites and not admitting it) or incentivized by the virgin market for virtual items. Even without malicious programs, there's the simple matter of people getting scammed and duped trying to do illicit trades (which happened all the time in D2, including to friends of mine falling for simple social engineering phishing).
The parallel to illegal drugs is drawn all the time, but it's still a very good analogy.
Heck items stayed valuable on ebay for ages. I cashed out when burning crusade came out the last time I seriously played D2 for a few hundred bucks.
What does 80% unlock mean?
So there will be no items in the auction house less than $1. What is the lowest possible profit people are willing to make? Sell an item for $2, and collect...what... 85 cents after the 15% fee and the $1 fee? Or is the 15% taken before the $1 fee for even less profit?
The RMAH won't have any items less than some full games on the App Store
Found this about Paypal's ebay fees:
"PayPal fees mainly apply to sellers, who pay a 2.9% transaction fee on the total sale amount plus a $0.30 fee per transaction"
Sooo.....we're being hammered for an additional 12.1%
Unless you want to cash out a commodity, in which case you're getting dinged for 27.1% over what you'd pay in fees at Ebay.
I expect the RMAH will be rapidly dominated by bots. $0.10 an item is a ton of money when you're living in rural Russia or China and selling a few hundred items a day. I just hope Blizzard has somehow improved their bot detection - they were completely incapable of stopping them in D2. I also hope they are pro-active. It would be possible for Blizzard to try to angle the bots and only shut down their accounts, when busted, once they try to cash out. So Blizzard gets to pocket 100% of their profits, but the economy and thrill of the hunt gets screwed up in the mean time as top tier items start going for $1.25.
I'm also concerned about what bots will do to the gold auction house. If it ends up being the case that you can buy millions of gold for $1.50 or whatever on the RMAH then that inflation is going to leak into the gold auction house and players who are not willing to spend real money buying game gold/items will have a very difficult time participating in even the gold auction house. Although I suppose there will be an equilibrium established anyhow. If you find a rare item and inflation is 181245829174% then you'll still be able to sell that item for an obscene amount of gold. The only thing that will change is that actual gold you pick up during the game will have close to 0 value.
I'm really curious to see how this all works out. Is the site hosted RMAH unprecedented?
http://reveal.diablo3.com/en_US
Middle of page. Counting up to 100% and every 10% there is an unlock be it dev diaries, wallpapers, etc.
FieryBalrog
Member
Unlike D2, Blizzard has a vested interest in the continuing health of the D3 economy, and making sure it is fun for players. It's not simply their reputation at stake, but also their earnings. A ruined economy is not a profitable economy.
That's another big positive side effect of this. (presumably)
Eve has a similar system, actually. More comprehensive, too.
Yoshichan
And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
They said you'll be able to do all 5 again eventually (if you missed them the first time).
FieryBalrog
Member
They'll be available again before launch.
Is anyone else concerned that Diablo 3 and Mists of Pandora aren't on the list of Blizzard titles you can purchase? As far as I know you've been able to load money into Blizz Bucks for awhile so I can't see why you couldn't use it to purchase Diablo 3.
The only interest I would have in accumulating money would be to save up for the Diablo expansion so I'm hoping they don't put some BS lag between release and when it is available for purchase with Blizz Bucks. If that's the case I'm probably better off just selling on the gold AH until I can dump a whole bunch on the RMAH for a single PayPal payout.
The only interest I would have in accumulating money would be to save up for the Diablo expansion so I'm hoping they don't put some BS lag between release and when it is available for purchase with Blizz Bucks. If that's the case I'm probably better off just selling on the gold AH until I can dump a whole bunch on the RMAH for a single PayPal payout.
They've thought ahead of you: The additional 15% commodities fee (assuming they count gold as a commodity) is going to gouge anyone that tries that. They win either way.
Oh, that makes perfect sense. I didn't even think of them counting gold as a commodity even though that is probably the number one reason they've added the fee.
If they're successful in creating bots, they'll probably wreck the gold based economy by making gold worthless. I don't think they'll have an impact on endgame loot though. What bot is going to live through hell or inferno on maps that change? They can farm gold all day, but only actual people will be able to play Inferno characters. That begs the question of "is farming rares lucrative enough to sit one farmer in front of a computer playing the game, instead of one in front of ten computers running bots".
?
They are, but if I get rares and I only sell them on the RMAH, I've opted out of the gold economy. No matter how much gold someone has, they can't have my item. If gold inflates to the point where it's worthless (like it did in D2), people won't use the gold auction house.
FieryBalrog
Member
There is no "gold based economy". Both economies are linked.
FieryBalrog
Member
They sell the gold and buy your item, they'll take a hit in efficiency but it's super easy to do.
Gold is freely tradeable between the two economies.
If gold is worthless they can simply sell whatever commodity takes it's place (gems, dyes, etc.), whatever serves as the common medium of exchange.
They'll take a 30% (15% commodities, 15% paypal) fee in order to turn that gold into money and buy my item?
What is their endgame? Resell my item....?
Actually, thinking about it, are blizzard bucks (or whatever they're called) acceptable currency on the RMAH? If so, I guess they could sell gold at 15% and convert that to blizzard bucks, then buy my item but...I don't know, I still don't see their strategy to profit from that. They're going to have to convert that to actual money through paypal at some point and incur the 15% fee.
So I went to the main Diablo 3 site to look at the new info posted about the RMAH when this screen showed up. It's for the Darkness Falls, Heroes Rise site. At the bottom of the page, it shows each classes reveal date as well as the final release date, but there is space for one more at the bottom of the page.
Did they say that they had more to reveal? Anyone know what this is supposed to be for?
Did they say that they had more to reveal? Anyone know what this is supposed to be for?
fizzelopeguss
Banned
Dude's face is fucked up.
So I went to the main Diablo 3 site to look at the new info posted about the RMAH when this screen showed up. It's for the Darkness Falls, Heroes Rise site. At the bottom of the page, it shows each classes reveal date as well as the final release date, but there is space for one more at the bottom of the page.
Did they say that they had more to reveal? Anyone know what this is supposed to be for?
Its a last chance to get any sigils you may have missed.
Pixel Pete
Member
A new class!
Themacabre
Member
Really, really not a fan of having to use a contract cell phone to be able transfer RMAH money to paypal.
Pre-paid won't work, neither will googlevoice (what I use) for their SMS mobile alert thing.
Pre-paid won't work, neither will googlevoice (what I use) for their SMS mobile alert thing.
I wonder if Chinese cellphones will work...
BolognaOni
Member
Yeah, I sort of wonder what the bot population will be like. WoW had some major botting going on for a while, but I don't know how good they were for farming stuff... The impression I got was that most of it was people leveling, or maybe those leveling "services" that used to be popular back when the 1-60 grind was a giant PITA.
I'm assuming D3 will run their "supervisor" program or whatever it was called in the background, that monitors other processes you have going, and thus the cat and mouse between Blizz and bot programmers begins.
I'm assuming D3 will run their "supervisor" program or whatever it was called in the background, that monitors other processes you have going, and thus the cat and mouse between Blizz and bot programmers begins.
sazzy
Member
Reallink
Member
Wait, what? How do they know what is or isn't a contract phone number? Why do carriers even release that kind of information?
I don't think they do, but it's probably using a charge-the-number thing (like those joke a day things use), and the phone company is probably declining the charge since there's no reliable billing target (not to mention that if you accidentally signed up for one of those joke a day things on a paygo phone it would suck a lot).
Themacabre
Member
Well, although I don't know exactly how blizzard or whomever knows that you are using a pre-paid phone or a googlevoice account for your text messages. I do know that it is easily done, and automatic.
Pre-paid phones (and the like) as well as googlevoice (there's a skype thing too and probably fifty others) don't work with blizzard's mobile alerts thing they just introduced.
Blizzard's authenticator isn't enough, apparently. Really sucks for people like me that wanted to try out the RMAH.
Every character you make gets it own set of wings.
Just play with other people who want to take it slow and hear all the story info. Problem solved.
- Status