Diablo III's Auction House

[bakan]

They aren't happy with only being payed once like in D2, so lets make D3 another cash-cow - the shop isn't even regionfree and bound to fees.

 

[Sgt. Dante]

Also, I'm not seeing anywhere in the original statement where Blizzard says they are keeping a cut of anything.

Might wanna read it again mate,

There's a nominal fee to put an item for sale. "The reason we're doing a listing fee is primarily so that the real-money auction house has a certain quality of items," Pardo says. And there's a percentage fee when you take cash for a sale. That's because an as of yet unnamed third-party payment provider will be handling the details of transferring your cash to your bank account.

Also if you go to http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/misc/9047-Auction-House-FAQ then you will see

Q: How is the transaction fee determined?
A: A nominal fixed transaction fee will be deducted from the seller for each item listed in the auction house. This fee consists of a fixed charge to list the item, which is assessed whether or not the item is successfully sold, and an additional fixed charge that is assessed only if the item is sold. Because the listing portion of the fee is charged even if the item doesn't sell, it will be in the seller's interest to list items he or she believes other players will be interested in, and to do so at a competitive price. Specific details related to the transaction fee for the currency-based auction house will vary by region and will be announced at a later date.

Please note that we plan to waive the listing portion of the fee for a limited number of transactions per account. In other words, for these transactions, the seller will only pay a transaction fee if the item is successfully sold, and that fee will not include the listing charge. We'll have further details on this as well at a later date.

So that's a listing fee, a cut of any profits and a charge to transfer "your" money to an account where you can actually use it.

 

[PH3NOmenon]

Except you can, you can opt out of Blizzards cut and go to using Paypal, or another third-party site like it. I read the full post, and the FAQ on mmo-champion.com.

So pretty much what I see happening is... People go to RL-Currency AH and buy a lot of gold, people in turn use the gold auction house and because they already have so much gold they set the prices far higher than anybody can pay. The economy is going to SUCK in this game. This is a horrible choice. I'm so displeased with Blizzard right now it makes me sick, I've been waiting for this game for so long and the more information they release the less likely I am to buy it.

Wait, you're worried that prices in D3's economy are going to be too high? Everyone else is worried that China and it's legion of goldfarmers will push prices to be too low.


Either way, it doesn't matter. Things are worth what people will pay for them. Smart people realise that there's no such thing as "too high" or "too low" in an economy.



Re: listing fees. Players get X amount of free listings. It is currently unknown if these free listings are one-time or weekly, or monthly. Fact is, that these listing fees are there to gut the gold-farmers. Farming more = earning less.

A small, blanket AH cut is to be expected. This is where blizzard "makes its money".

After that, money either goes to Blizzard Store dollars, or if you prefer cold hard cash, you pay a transaction fee to Pay-Pal (or something similar.)



This entire system essentially means they're legalizing marijuana. Yes, it's a slippery slope. But at least the "government", now gets a cut and people no longer get scammed and robbed by the "drug dealers." Note that "the government" isn't farming and selling "marijuana", they're just offering a safe platform for players to do what they would do anyway, without risks. Also they're giving you all the tools you need to start up your own farm. Also they're creating a separate world where "marijuana" doesn't exist (hardcore mode).


I'm all for this, really. Can't wait to see it in action!

 

[mattaui]

I can't see how this is a bad thing at all. This isn't an MMO, after all, so you're not going to have people farming stuff and getting in your way while you play D3 unless you purposefully play with people who are farmers. If you want to avoid it, you can. If you want to sell extra cool stuff you find and make some money, you can. If you're missing valuable widget X and don't mind paying $5 for it, then it's right there. Blizzard is just providing a safe, official way to engage in behavior that is already underway.

 

[hyzaku]

Why exactly can't we buy and sell with the in-game currency? Why must real money get involved if this is really to "facilitate trading?"

I gotta say, I smell Kotick all over this.

 

[Worgen]

I dont see how an auction house makes sense in d3 considering its not a player driven economy or anything like that, I mean something like this would vaguely make sense in wow but d3.... just weird, sounds like motivation for blizzard to make items a huge pain in the ass to get

 

[Worgen]

Why exactly can't we buy and sell with the in-game currency? Why must real money get involved if this is really to "facilitate trading?"

I gotta say, I smell Kotick all over this.

First off, you can. You make gold just like you did in D1 and D2. They do have a Gold Only Auction house, hell it even says it in the POST. Plus, in Hardcore mode, you can ONLY use the Gold Auction House.

I dont see how an auction house makes sense in d3 considering its not a player driven economy or anything like that, I mean something like this would vaguely make sense in wow but d3.... just weird, sounds like motivation for blizzard to make items a huge pain in the ass to get

How isn't it a Player-Driven Economy? People who get items will put them up for Gold/Real Money and then people buy it normally. Just like WoW for the most part.

The items won't be a pain in the ass to get. The only thing that is different is that people who used to sell items on the Black Market can now optionally sell them through Blizzard. The items still drop from the same places from the same Mobs and have the same exact requisites to get them. Nothing. Has. Changed.

because of the way the game type is setup, in an mmo items are supposed to be hard to get since it makes you play longer, this is a dungeon crawler though, its about tons of items and quickly finding new replacement items, with perhaps a bit of rareness to some really good ones, really there is only one type of item that goes into this sort of thing at all and it is the set piece item, which is a stupid idea for this game type anyway

 

[elvor0]

This is exactly the same as D2, just without the black market. NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

Fuck sake what is it with all these people bitching? If you played D2 you KNOW that there was a fucking huge market for items for $$$, entire websites set up just for that. And it was dodgy as fuck.

All this does is cut the dodgy market out and give people a safe environment to trade items for money. This isn't wow, where you do endgame raids, anyone hows played D2 knows how Diablo works, and to those bitching about the economy are full of crap too. Gold has NO value in Diablo beyond spending almost nothing to repair gear, thats IT.

Seriously anyone bitching about this has either:

-Never played Diablo.
-Never played Diablo and Has only played WoW and is forming their opinion on that (Where this WOULD be bad).
-Has never played either games, doesn't have a clue, blatantly hasn't read the FAQ and is just being sensationalist.
-OR is a fucking moron and thinks this is Blizzard just selling any item you want.

Besides, if you don't want an item, stick it on the auction house and make a little money out of it instead of selling it for useless gold.

This isn't like Blizzard are selling items, that would be an entirely different matter, which would deserve boycotting. This is just PEOPLE selling items via an ingame browser, they still have to find the items in the first place, items are still going to be as rare as they were before, because they still have to drop in order to be sold.

Actually learn how DIablo works and read the fucking FAQ before you start getting up in arms.

Except you can, you can opt out of Blizzards cut and go to using Paypal, or another third-party site like it. I read the full post, and the FAQ on mmo-champion.com.

So pretty much what I see happening is... People go to RL-Currency AH and buy a lot of gold, people in turn use the gold auction house and because they already have so much gold they set the prices far higher than anybody can pay. The economy is going to SUCK in this game. This is a horrible choice. I'm so displeased with Blizzard right now it makes me sick, I've been waiting for this game for so long and the more information they release the less likely I am to buy it.

Agree, I'm a HUGE Diablo fan, alwayes have been, but so far every thing we've heard from Blizzard on the new game makes me shake my head in dissapointment - This is not Diablo! I'm still going to buy it, I just hope it wont be gathering dust next to Star Craft II Wings of Liberty...

MM, because this didn't already happen in Diablo 2, nobody bought gold and items from dodgy sites at all. It was all pure and completely legit.

This is going to happen regardless of whether or not theres an in game version of it, the only way around it in games like this is 100% soul binding the second you touch an item or put it in your inventory and nobody wants that.

 

[UnknownGunslinger]

Except you can, you can opt out of Blizzards cut and go to using Paypal, or another third-party site like it. I read the full post, and the FAQ on mmo-champion.com.

So pretty much what I see happening is... People go to RL-Currency AH and buy a lot of gold, people in turn use the gold auction house and because they already have so much gold they set the prices far higher than anybody can pay. The economy is going to SUCK in this game. This is a horrible choice. I'm so displeased with Blizzard right now it makes me sick, I've been waiting for this game for so long and the more information they release the less likely I am to buy it.

Agree, I'm a HUGE Diablo fan, alwayes have been, but so far every thing we've heard from Blizzard on the new game makes me shake my head in dissapointment - This is not Diablo! I'm still going to buy it, I just hope it wont be gathering dust next to Star Craft II Wings of Liberty...

 

[Stall]

Eh, I won't judge it until I see it. It makes sense really. People have always bought and sold D2 items, so I guess Blizz is taking the "if you can't beat 'em, then join 'em" philosophy towards combating illegal item trading. Besides, there were no real good ways to trade in D2... you had to really trust someone to trade with them, or they might end up running off with your gold or your loot. It's nice to see some legitimized way of doing it.

And being able to make some money from playing D3 sounds decent as well. I'll withhold my cynicism and wait and see. The only thing that concerns me is being able to sell currency... I'm worried that would debase the in-game currency auction houses, which seems a little unfair towards players who do not wish to take advantage of RMTs. If you couldn't buy gold on the real money AH, then I'd be cautiously optimistic towards this.

I dont see how an auction house makes sense in d3 considering its not a player driven economy or anything like that, I mean something like this would vaguely make sense in wow but d3.... just weird, sounds like motivation for blizzard to make items a huge pain in the ass to get

I guess you never played D2, eh? Back when I played, you'd always find people trying to set up trades for nice rare items they found in the player lobby, and there were tons upon tons of websites where people would sell items they found as well (since nothing is bind on pickup like WOW). There is a HUUUUUUUUGE economy for D2 items.

 

[Elamdri]

Well, looks like it's Business Time. *Pulls up Flight of the Conchords and gets to work gold-farming*

 

[teisjm]

This is GREAT! You know what? Can I just pay a couple hundred bucks and get my character to the highest level and gear? And while we are at it, every time a content patch comes out just charge my account for the new gear and level me up to the new level cap.

Yeah being able to buy gear with money does and always will ruin games and their economy. Especially for those that don't use real life money.

I love how they are claiming they are using this system to curb players accounts getting jacked. "Definitely one of the biggest problems with WoW is the account compromises that happen from all those situations." But lets also take a bit of money from each and every transaction. What? It's for your own safety!

Did they forget why they were trying to stop gold sellers in the first place? Cause it fucks your game. Man, glad I'm not at all interested in this game.

I guess they're hoping to controll the market instead of fighting it, cause it'll exist either way, no doubt about that.
Guess the idea is, that it'll be harder to maintain an illegal market if theres a legal alternative.
Even if you're legally selling the gear for cash, it's still an incentive for people to hack accounts and steal items, or to dupe items and sell them for money, but i think those things will be easier to fight, if the transactions goes through blizzard.

As for buying power... as long as you're not able to buy stuff that players can't achieve anyways, i don't see the big problem, it's not like they're getting benefits the rest of us can't get without paying.
It's not more balance breaking than in the old Diablo games, or WoW or any other multiplayer rpg game, where you can buy a leveled account from someone. If you wanna pay other people to play the game you bought for you, be my guest, just wondering why you got the game in the first place.

Gold farmers or whatever they'll be called ain't gonna be a problem either, if D3 runs instanced servers like D2, cause they're not gonna fill up the landscape and make questing hard for you like in WoW.

Personally, i don't see this approach creating any problems that didn't already exist, they're just taking controll over the problem and can hopefully use that position to reduce some of the bad parts.

 

[Abedeus]

Why exactly can't we buy and sell with the in-game currency? Why must real money get involved if this is really to "facilitate trading?"

I gotta say, I smell Kotick all over this.

We can? There are two Auction Houses. You can buy with in-game currency, Real Money Trading, and even sell/buy gold.

 

[TheDooD]

More and more Blizzard is starting to piss me off with the stupid shit they're doing with Diablo 3.

First was with the stupid ass idea to give every character their own "magic" system and it make it more confusing then the basic mana system. Then getting rid of the town portal scrolls. Now this bullshit, ughh this just reeks of Kotick not knowing jackshit about games.

 

[Dirty Apple]

I dont see how an auction house makes sense in d3 considering its not a player driven economy or anything like that, I mean something like this would vaguely make sense in wow but d3.... just weird, sounds like motivation for blizzard to make items a huge pain in the ass to get

If TF2 shows us anything, if you create a market people will come. I predict, based on TF2 again, that a metagame will manifest around the selling of ultra rares and prestige items. Eventually, for a lot of players, the game will just become secondary to collecting uber loot.

 

[viranimus]

I adore how the justification for this is...

"Ultimately players want it," Pardo says. "If Blizzard doesn't do this system, I'm not so naïve to think that it's not going to happen." Anybody who played Diablo or Diablo II remembers how sketchy it was just to trade items. And that's before you took all the shady third-party item sellers into account

So it boils down to "if we dont do it, other people will do it for us and thats the only reason why we are doing this.


Ok Pardo.. ive got a real easy solution. Seeings how your the organization who controls the code of the game, Perhaps, maybe, you can code to prevent these transactions all together. Yeah go ahead, cut the connectivity cord. Wouldnt that be easier than making a system you are trying to sound like you dont want?

Yes...clear and blatant cash grab. At least have the decency to admit its a blatant cash grab.

 

[frehls]

hue

 

[The Philistine]

So to curb people's accounts getting hacked, Blizzard is having you buy gold through them rather than a shady third party site? While that may take out some of the risk, that isn't going to stop scammers and hackers from compromising accounts. Hell, it just makes things easier for them to cash out once they've gotten a hold on someone's stuff.

 

[Weaver]

So basically, Gold farming is okay so long as Blizzard gets their due cut.
Great.

 

[Alar]

Strangely, I don't mind this.

I think the fact that you can't turn take the money into the real world and spend it on anything other than Blizzard stuff makes is good.

You can, but as was stated before, only on an item-by-item basis. This means that you could set up your (probably going to be) PayPal account and switch it on when you're selling something big, get the money for that (minus the fees) and then switch it back to your Battle.net account for the other items in order to pay for Blizzard Store items or WoW subs.

I also don't really mind this all that much. I think too many people are making a big deal out of it.