Diablo III's Auction House

[Azure Sky]

1. So don't bother tracking them down and shutting down, let's help them. And get something for ourselves.
2. Yeeaaaahhh okay.
3. No? Blizzard isn't going to do anything to AH, it's player-driven.

Okay, look at this: Gold selling companies set up bots/Chinese sweat shop workers to farm items/gold.

You find an unique, incredibly happy, go to AH, and want to get a fair price for it. You know it's a good unique, it's great item.

What do you see?

JoeyHoney1 sells it for $0.5, JoeyHoney2 sells it for $0.5, JoeyHoney3 sells it for $0.5. Hundreds of Chinese bots break down the economy.

1: Given the current evidence, Blizz is unable to 'track down' much less being able to touch any operation off-shore save for occasionally catching a carrier account, which has nothing stored.

2: I pick on people more 'powerful', it's how I roll. =3

3: The point stands, it self-regulates, as I have said many times.

Besides, any RMT site that operates in Blizzards little AH essentially lay all their cards out for Blizzard to track on a whim. Unlike the ones that operate out of unsecured third party sites.

Not to mention there is a currency lock on the AH's, making it much harder to trade USD outside of the US. And if they start up in the US, then Blizz can crush them with the 250mm Lawyer Cannons. =3

Edit: Also keep in mind that the RMTers still need to pull a profit over the Listing, Sale and Cash out Fees. Blizz have stated that players get a few free listings a week, and if you don't cash out - use it for more AH/Blizz store, that is a potential 1 fee to 3, netting you a higher profit at a lower listing price.

Edit:Edit: Driving RMTers to list at bare minimum prices, while still being able to undercut them for higher profit as well as potentially securing a high-value currency market seems to be a highly possible outcome - assuming Blizz don't screw it up.

 

[Abedeus]

1. So don't bother tracking them down and shutting down, let's help them. And get something for ourselves.
2. Yeeaaaahhh okay.
3. No? Blizzard isn't going to do anything to AH, it's player-driven.

Okay, look at this: Gold selling companies set up bots/Chinese sweat shop workers to farm items/gold.

You find an unique, incredibly happy, go to AH, and want to get a fair price for it. You know it's a good unique, it's great item.

What do you see?

JoeyHoney1 sells it for $0.5, JoeyHoney2 sells it for $0.5, JoeyHoney3 sells it for $0.5. Hundreds of Chinese bots break down the economy.

1: Given the current evidence, Blizz is unable to 'track down' much less being able to touch any operation off-shore save for occasionally catching a carrier account, which has nothing stored.

2: I pick on people more 'powerful', it's how I roll. =3

3: The point stands, it self-regulates, as I have said many times.

Besides, any RMT site that operates in Blizzards little AH essentially lay all their cards out for Blizzard to track on a whim. Unlike the ones that operate out of unsecured third party sites.

Not to mention there is a currency lock on the AH's, making it much harder to trade USD outside of the US. And if they start up in the US, then Blizz can crush them with the 250mm Lawyer Cannons. =3

Your 1 and things under 3rd point contradict themselves.

Blizz can't track down RMT. But if they try to start RMT here, Blizz will make law happen!!1
Unless they just connect from outside.

AH regulates itself IF it's just players. Bots don't count as players. Even if a thousand of players wants to sell an item for $5, bots will get ten times more items and sell them for $2.5. People who want to buy the item won't care if it's from a legal player or a bot, thus forcing normal people to sell items cheaper. RMT bots will put their items cheaper, and it will happen over and over until everyone gives up on AH and just lets the bots sell items. Items become worthless, even more than in D2, because now you can legally sell them for real money.

 

[Azure Sky]

snip

Your 1 and things under 3rd point contradict themselves.

Blizz can't track down RMT. But if they try to start RMT here, Blizz will make law happen!!1
Unless they just connect from outside.

AH regulates itself IF it's just players. Bots don't count as players. Even if a thousand of players wants to sell an item for $5, bots will get ten times more items and sell them for $2.5. People who want to buy the item won't care if it's from a legal player or a bot, thus forcing normal people to sell items cheaper. RMT bots will put their items cheaper, and it will happen over and over until everyone gives up on AH and just lets the bots sell items. Items become worthless, even more than in D2, because now you can legally sell them for real money.

1st and 3rd point have noting to do with one another.

Also, read my edits, sleep deprivation is leading me to miss things.

 

[Breywood]

The auction house doesn't sound as bad as it could be, It isn't like it's necessary to buy items to "be good." Then again, I can see why the PvP kiddies and those who are hoping to make their mark online would be upset at this, and for some odd reason, I feel like listening to some classic Beck with a big foolish grin on my face.

On the other hand, in spite of the fact I play Diablo 2 regularly, I don't trade on D2jsp, I don't but from item sites and I don't PvP, I don't care where I am on the Ladder...

aaaand I've never been to Boston in the fall!

 

[Smooth Operator]

Yeah, I'm not sure this is the right solution to gold and item selling. It reeks of Kotick.

Cmon don't be like that, you know Bobby loves you('re wallet)

Gotta hand it to them tho, the pool of money making bullshit ideas never runs out.

 

[fundayz]

Your 1 and things under 3rd point contradict themselves.

Blizz can't track down RMT. But if they try to start RMT here, Blizz will make law happen!!1
Unless they just connect from outside.

AH regulates itself IF it's just players. Bots don't count as players. Even if a thousand of players wants to sell an item for $5, bots will get ten times more items and sell them for $2.5. People who want to buy the item won't care if it's from a legal player or a bot, thus forcing normal people to sell items cheaper. RMT bots will put their items cheaper, and it will happen over and over until everyone gives up on AH and just lets the bots sell items. Items become worthless, even more than in D2, because now you can legally sell them for real money.

Don't bother arguing with him, you can't get logic through. He speaks out of speculation, avoids arguments, and misleads conversation.

His whole argument boils down to "Players will out compete RMT sites thus stabilizing the economy", yet keeps avoiding the question of HOW regular, casual players are going to compete with businesses built and OPTIMIZED to produce the most amount of gold using unfair, but unavoidable, means like bots and exploited 3rd world workers? The answer is obvious: They won't.

Players WILL be undercut and oversold by near-anonymous groups, as integrating the transaction system into the game will remove the necessity of having site in the first place. This system gives RMT groups a direct, secure line to their customers in-game.

It is absolutely genius from a business stand point, being basically a perfect example of "If you can't beat them, join them". However, even though it will likely make them more money, it sells out the integrity of the franchise by making Diablo 3 a game that you buy in order to spend more money on it.

He also completely ignored one of my main points(even though he claimed he did): Even if the economic problems with RMT group WERE completely avoided, allowing players to buy in-game benefits using out-of-game means is a terrible idea.

You can't sale power! Even Extra Credits had an episode about this.

It undermines the challenge of the game, the reward mechanics of the game, and [more importantly] it completely undermines other players' efforts and merits.

 

[Breywood]

Double post.

 

[Breywood]

It undermines the challenge of the game, the reward mechanics of the game, and [more importantly] it completely undermines other players' efforts and merits.

It will undermine the challenge of the game IF you so let it and allow others to dictate to you how to enjoy playing the game. I'm not sure how many people will break down and spend real money for virtual items (I sure as hell wouldn't, even IF i were interested in D3) and it would only be an issue with the people who take the PvP aspect seriously*. If there will be a PvP leaderboard or even a "ladder", then yes, this is an issue and needs to be redeveloped. Otherwise, why not just go and play the damn game (when it comes out, of course) and not worry about whether someone else is "cheating?"

This used to be an issue for me. Then I decided to just do my own thing and build characters with gear I farmed from my own characters. And it's the most fun I have until friends ask me for the tenth time if I want a shako or an arach's or if I need a rush for a sorceress so I can start botting.

*Do I have to tell you about how wonderfully mature and professional the Diablo PvP community is?

 

[fundayz]

It undermines the challenge of the game, the reward mechanics of the game, and [more importantly] it completely undermines other players' efforts and merits.

It will undermine the challenge of the game IF you so let it and allow others to dictate to you how to enjoy playing the game. I'm not sure how many people will break down and spend real money for virtual items (I sure as hell wouldn't, even IF i were interested in D3) and it would only be an issue with the people who take the PvP aspect seriously*. If there will be a PvP leaderboard or even a "ladder", then yes, this is an issue and needs to be redeveloped. Otherwise, why not just go and play the damn game (when it comes out, of course) and not worry about whether someone else is "cheating?"

This used to be an issue for me. Then I decided to just do my own thing and build characters with gear I farmed from my own characters. And it's the most fun I have until friends ask me for the tenth time if I want a shako or an arach's or if I need a rush for a sorceress so I can start botting.

*Do I have to tell you about how wonderfully mature and professional the Diablo PvP community is?

Well good for you, really, that you can enjoy a game while others buy and cheat their game through. However, we are talking about a multiplayer environment not just playing solo. You can't restrict players to a single player experience unless they want to spend money just to be on a level playing field.

Also, just because you don't PvP doesn't mean other people don't enjoy this aspect of the game, in fact, it is one of the reasons D2 is still played today.

Do you think casual PvP players that don't want to spend more money on the game won't be bothered when they find out that a vast number of their opponents have bought their gear? Even players that don't care about a leaderboard(like me) still care about fair competition. Being at an inherent disadvantage is never fun in competition, and the fact is that the average non-paying player WILL be at a disadvantage compared to the average paying player(if there wasn't an advantage).

You could try to argue that not that many people will buy items but, considering many, many people already risk their accounts, money and personal information to buy items from shady third party sites, I think that is a very naive assumption for a game that has Real Money Trading built in.

Furthermore, Blizzard believes that most players will tend to go to the RMAH instead of the gold AH and considers playing the market with real world currencies being a fair practice. [http://www.gameplanet.co.nz/pc/games/156898.Diablo-III/features/137613.Diablo-IIIs-Jay-Wilson/]

The bottom line is that with the RMAH they have made Diablo 3 a single player game first and a RMT game second. If you only play single player or maybe with friends only you won't find yourself affected but if you want multiplayer then you will be at a disadvantage against many players unless you buy at least some gear/weapons/upgrades/etc.

 

[PH3NOmenon]

He also completely ignored one of my main points(even though he claimed he did): Even if the economic problems with RMT group WERE completely avoided, allowing players to buy in-game benefits using out-of-game means is a terrible idea.

You can't sale power! Even Extra Credits had an episode about this.

It undermines the challenge of the game, the reward mechanics of the game, and [more importantly] it completely undermines other players' efforts and merits.

Not true.

Well, technically, at least.


Sirlin.net had a very lengthy exposition about this at some point, but you'd be able to find the same arguments elsewhere. I'll give you a few to get started, when I have time I'll try and find the exposé on it.

1) This RMAH will not sell power.

If you're coming from a WoW standpoint, you might think it does. But Diablo isn't WoW. Diablo hasn't got any "Bind on Pickup" items. Decking out newbie friends in ridiculously powerful stuff is part of the game. Real Money transactions or not, this is something you'll need to come to terms with when playing Diablo. You're completely free to detest this, but it's a part of the game's design. People who were looking forward to this title can't complain about this point without also saying they never liked the title in the first place.

Furthermore: There's no items that can only be acquired on the RMAH. Hence, power isn't "sold". You can acquire power, yes. But you always could. This time around, there's a safe, alternative payment form alongside the old one. The "don't sell power" argument is saying "don't make spending money a better alternative than *not* spending money". You probably didn't think the Extra Credits episode through.

2) Time = Money

Remember that saying? Even the goblins in WoW say it all the time, which is sort of ironic since WoW doesn't adhere to this policy. Lets play the "suppose" game for a second. Suppose I'm the best player in the world. Like, seriously, I'm frigging awesome. I'm way better than you. In fact, I'm so good that I spend my days and most of my nights playing in and winning various other tournaments. Like, say Halo and SC2 and WoW arenas. I don't have time to play D3 and farm up that über rare by running Baal 150 times a day and thus I buy the best gear with all my prize money from other games. Now I can compete with you, the player who has tons of time.

My gear isn't going to be better than yours, since we both have access to the same pool of items it literally can't be better. It can be on par, yes, but never better. You could respond to this argument by saying "But I put in more time, hence I should have better equipment." and you know what? You'd be wrong.

It's a valid reasoning, for sure. "More time = better gear" is basically what WoW is all about. Thing is, Diablo doesn't use the same design principles. You might think "More time = better gear." should be true everywhere, but the Diablo developers disagree. They think "Time = Money" and that's not wrong. It's a different viewpoint, but just as valid as yours. I wish people would learn to recognise and respect viewpoints that are not their own.


On top of all that wall of text, you should probably be aware of the fact that Diablo isn't going to be supporting serious PvP. I've already written out a "PvP was never promised to be balanced. It's working as intended." post to copypasta to every single "DIABLO PVP IS BROHKEN I R QUITTING STUPID BLIZZ11!!1" post I see. so all this fear that you're going to be curbstomped by people who buy their gear is pretty silly to start with.

 

[Abedeus]

snip

Your 1 and things under 3rd point contradict themselves.

Blizz can't track down RMT. But if they try to start RMT here, Blizz will make law happen!!1
Unless they just connect from outside.

AH regulates itself IF it's just players. Bots don't count as players. Even if a thousand of players wants to sell an item for $5, bots will get ten times more items and sell them for $2.5. People who want to buy the item won't care if it's from a legal player or a bot, thus forcing normal people to sell items cheaper. RMT bots will put their items cheaper, and it will happen over and over until everyone gives up on AH and just lets the bots sell items. Items become worthless, even more than in D2, because now you can legally sell them for real money.

1st and 3rd point have noting to do with one another.

Also, read my edits, sleep deprivation is leading me to miss things.

I said Point nr1 and stuff UNDER 3. The whole "Blizz will use the power of lawyers to combat them blablabla". Either Blizzard can't control them, or they can. Make up your damn mind.

 

[fundayz]

1) This RMAH will not sell power.

If you're coming from a WoW standpoint, you might think it does. But Diablo isn't WoW. Diablo hasn't got any "Bind on Pickup" items. Decking out newbie friends in ridiculously powerful stuff is part of the game. Real Money transactions or not, this is something you'll need to come to terms with when playing Diablo. You're completely free to detest this, but it's a part of the game's design. People who were looking forward to this title can't complain about this point without also saying they never liked the title in the first place.

Furthermore: There's no items that can only be acquired on the RMAH. Hence, power isn't "sold". You can acquire power, yes. But you always could. This time around, there's a safe, alternative payment form alongside the old one. The "don't sell power" argument is saying "don't make spending money a better alternative than *not* spending money". You probably didn't think the Extra Credits episode through.

1. There's a HUGE difference between a Free Economy like EVE's, Diablo 2's, or even Runescape's and a Free RMT Economy. There is also a HUGE difference between making or obtaining money through in-game means and using out-of-game resources for an instantaneous advantage.

2. How does the RMAH NOT sell power? Can you buy gear better than the one you have? Yes! Can you buy gold to spend in game? Yes! Will you be able to buy pre-made characters? Yes!

Just because you are not forced to buy power doesn't mean you that power isn't sold.

3. The analogy of a player being helped out by a friend breaks down when you realize that the benefiting player is not adding out-of-game resources into the economy and that the RMAH doesn't act like a friend helping you out once in a while.

The RMAH is going to allow players to buy whatever advantage items or gold give them whenever they want, allowing people with money to basically bypass the game. Factor in character sales(which is already planned by Blizz) and anyone can simply stroll in with the best character and equipment available right off the bat as long as they got the money for it.

2) Time = Money

Remember that saying? Even the goblins in WoW say it all the time, which is sort of ironic since WoW doesn't adhere to this policy. Lets play the "suppose" game for a second. Suppose I'm the best player in the world. Like, seriously, I'm frigging awesome. I'm way better than you. In fact, I'm so good that I spend my days and most of my nights playing in and winning various other tournaments. Like, say Halo and SC2 and WoW arenas. I don't have time to play D3 and farm up that über rare by running Baal 150 times a day and thus I buy the best gear with all my prize money from other games. Now I can compete with you, the player who has tons of time.

My gear isn't going to be better than yours, since we both have access to the same pool of items it literally can't be better. It can be on par, yes, but never better. You could respond to this argument by saying "But I put in more time, hence I should have better equipment." and you know what? You'd be wrong.

It's a valid reasoning, for sure. "More time = better gear" is basically what WoW is all about. Thing is, Diablo doesn't use the same design principles. You might think "More time = better gear." should be true everywhere, but the Diablo developers disagree. They think "Time = Money" and that's not wrong. It's a different viewpoint, but just as valid as yours. I wish people would learn to recognise and respect viewpoints that are not their own.

On top of all that wall of text, you should probably be aware of the fact that Diablo isn't going to be supporting serious PvP. I've already written out a "PvP was never promised to be balanced. It's working as intended." post to copypasta to every single "DIABLO PVP IS BROHKEN I R QUITTING STUPID BLIZZ11!!1" post I see. so all this fear that you're going to be curbstomped by people who buy their gear is pretty silly to start with.

How could your gear never better than other players' if you are using money to buy it? Do you think everyone is going to have the best gear? This is of course not true and the RMT will allow anyone to buy an advantage over many other players WITH OUT-OF-GAME RESOURCES.

I don't care if you care if you buy things with in-game gold and your own hard work/trading skills, but the moment you bring in real world currency into it you are undermining other players' merits.

If you can't see how a player being able to instantly obtain everything another player has acquired through in-game effort, whether combat or trading, just by using real world currency then there is not much left to talk about.

Finally, it is incredibly narrow-minded if you think that PvP won't be affected just because it isn't serious or hardcore PvP. You don't have to be a hardcore PvPer to dislike the fact that your competition has possibly bought an advantage.

 

[Ilyak1986]

To say you can't stop item selling/gold selling is absolutely disingenuous.

Know a really stupidly easy way to instant-kill any bots?

First of all: you don't sell the game retail. You sell it only on your online account. In order to buy this game, you have to provide a debit or credit card number.

Now say you get caught botting/item selling/other illegal activity.

First and foremost, your CD key, your email account, and your game as it pertains to that credit card/debit card automatically gets banned. And second of all, since I'd have your credit card/debit card number on account, I can hide the latter portion of my EULA somewhere 3 quarters down where you'll definitely scroll past if you just scroll to the bottom and click "I agree" that if you do cheat, well hey, I have your CC/DC in my database, so as a penalty for griefing the legitimate players, I'm going to gouge you for another $100 for a game you may have paid $60 originally from.

How do you detect cheating? Easy. Statistics. Keep message logs in every game. This is extremely easy with Diablo type games in which it's not a single persistent server. Do you have (EG sdfgxfkbndmfg) joined the game. Level 1 (how they get to nm/hell is beyond me, glitch rushes, go figure). And now they're going to spam.

"BUY OUR ITEMS!!!! WWW.PHATLEWTZ.COM!"
"UNID SWORD OF NOOB SLAYING, RED RING OF DEATH, SHIELD OF ALL BLOCKING!"
"ALL $5 OR LESS! WHEN YOU PURCHASE, GET A FREE BOOTS OF BETTER LOOTS!"

And of course, those three lines don't come up at a rate of 100 WPM or however fast somebody types. They get copy-pasta'd in all of 2 seconds.

So, how many different "this is a bot" giveaways do we have?

A: a long string of consonants. I suppose this can be subverted with some vowels thrown in. Such as aserseraweasdfser. But stupid bots might get caught by this.
B: Level 1, or other extremely low level for the level of difficulty they're joining.
C: Usually this toon is "naked" or has no gear on themselves whatsoever. If you assign certain numerical values to gear for the sake of detecting this kind of thing, you'll see that these guys are easy outliers.
D: Caps spam. Once again, another easily subverted one, but some bots might do this. Another easy catch.
E: Website extensions. ".com", ".net", etc...
F: The $ symbol. Or heck, #.## or ##.## (price advertisements).
G: Ungodly WPM. In my example, that's 31 words. They'll pop out usually in 3 seconds. That's about 10 words a second, or 600 WPM. I'm not sure if any human alive can hit that. I'd be amazed at 300 WPM.

After every instance of a game closes down, just run this script over the chatlog. It should take all of a couple of seconds. Wham, instant ban.

It's really the same kind of crap that Gmail uses to send stuff to your spam filter. Imagine if these bots tried spamming your gmail. Wham, instantly to the spam bin. Why can't blizz do the EXACT SAME THING?

Worst to worst, heck, tell you what...

If I'm a game company and want to prevent this thing: create a special item called "sigil of the just", which gets obtained by reporting spammers like this. Make it be something along the power level of the annihilus small charm in D2. Bot comes on, someone goes "print screen", emails blizz the screenshot and their account name/character name on whom they want the item, and next time they log in, wham, brand new shiny piece of power, and one less bot on the realms. This is all very very simple.

And then, on your website, have a counter of "accounts banned today", and every so often, have a press release saying "over the last X months, we've banned X00,000 accounts. We take a hard stance against cheating and underhanded practices. Anyone caught doing this will have their account banned without warning."

So not only do I profiteer from cheaters underhanded policies (oh hey, nice item selling website. Account ban, gouge your credit card, try it again and the same thing will happen), but I also build my brand with upstanding legitimate players.

What's so difficult here?

 

[Breywood]

However, we are talking about a multiplayer environment not just playing solo. You can't restrict players to a single player experience unless they want to spend money just to be on a level playing field.

Even co-operative play? Interesting.

Also, just because you don't PvP doesn't mean other people don't enjoy this aspect of the game, in fact, it is one of the reasons D2 is still played today.

Good point. And you know what the rules are?

"No deadly strike. No critical hit. No resistances above 75%. No usage of (insert whatever is the weak point of their build). Anything which causes my character to be defeated is either lag generated by my opponent or BM BM BM BM BM"

Do you think casual PvP players that don't want to spend more money on the game won't be bothered when they find out that a vast number of their opponents have bought their gear?

Of course they would. See above. There are always ways to build cheap but effective characters. It's not just the itamz, it's also the tactics.

The bottom line is that with the RMAH they have made Diablo 3 a single player game first and a RMT game second. If you only play single player or maybe with friends only you won't find yourself affected but if you want multiplayer then you will be at a disadvantage against many players unless you buy at least some gear/weapons/upgrades/etc.

Right. You wouldn't want to be laughed at because you need to be rushed. And the guy who spent $50 has the right to heap the personal abuse upon you because you're so n00b you need his help? Oh wait. Multiplayer will be totally competitive?

This isn't to say that I don't see your point. Perhaps if they killed the RM aspect this would make it better? Perhaps I'm a little too old and jaded to be upset about a level playing field in a video game like Diablo 3.

 

[captainwalrus]

You can't sale power! Even Extra Credits had an episode about this.

It undermines the challenge of the game, the reward mechanics of the game, and [more importantly] it completely undermines other players' efforts and merits.

The AH system doesn't sell power. Selling power generally means that paying players will have access to content that non-paying players don't have access to. Every single item that is put up for sale in the AH is attainable by playing the game normally. The only advantage for players using cash transactions is getting the items/gear they want faster than other players. It only undermines the challenge of the game and reward mechanics for the players who buy into the system.

If you're going to bring up Extra Credits, then realize that this system is basically what the Extra Credits guys were promoting. The AH system sells convenience, not power. F2P players will have access to all content that P2P players have access to. It's just that the P2P guys will have gotten it faster.

I'm actually really disappointed with Blizzard, and have been for some time, do you guys remember how awesome the cut-scenes in Warcraft III were? Do you know the reason why they refuse to make great cutscenes like those for their current games? They say it costs too much. They are literally saying, that now that they're a billion dollar mega-corporation and they know that people will buy whatever they pump out, they are willing to cut a million corners and not put nearly as much money or effort into their games as they could and/or should.

I don't know about you, but I thought the cutscenes in SC2 were pretty awesome.

 

[fundayz]

The AH system doesn't sell power. Selling power generally means that paying players will have access to content that non-paying players don't have access to. Every single item that is put up for sale in the AH is attainable by playing the game normally. The only advantage for players using cash transactions is getting the items/gear they want faster than other players. It only undermines the challenge of the game and reward mechanics for the players who buy into the system.

If you're going to bring up Extra Credits, then realize that this system is basically what the Extra Credits guys were promoting. The AH system sells convenience, not power. F2P players will have access to all content that P2P players have access to. It's just that the P2P guys will have gotten it faster.

You couldn't be any more mistaken. The P2P players aren't getting things faster, they are getting them instantly and without ANY in-game effort.

Selling power is not just having access to more content, although that is sometimes ONE way to buy power.

Power is ANYTHING that gives you a direct in-game advantage. Buying items, gold and characters (i.e. all the things that will be traded on Diablo 3's RMAH) is the most basic way of buying power. It doesn't matter if everyone has the same potential power level, the fact is that someone can use out-of-game resources to instantly and effortlessly improve their combat performance.

This is NOT convenience. Convenience is things like extra inventory room, extra bank room, more character slots, etc; These things do not directly improve a player's combat performance. Items, gold and pre-made characters do give a direct combat advantage.



An example might make it easier to see why Diablo 3's RMAH is EXACTLY selling power:

Player A and Player B both start playing on the same day. They both have the same amount of skill and time available to play.

After a week of playing, both players have the same level, stats and their armours are of equivalent quality. For all intents and purposes these two players are equivalent.

At this point Player B hops on the RMAH and uses real world currency to buy a full set of high quality gear, expensive runes and gems, and a large chunk of gold to boot for things like repairs and the like.

Player B now has better stats and skills than Player A, making him more powerful for the sole reason of having spent real world money.

 

[ElBozo]

To say you can't stop item selling/gold selling is absolutely disingenuous.

Know a really stupidly easy way to instant-kill any bots?

First of all: you don't sell the game retail. You sell it only on your online account. In order to buy this game, you have to provide a debit or credit card number.

Now say you get caught botting/item selling/other illegal activity.

First and foremost, your CD key, your email account, and your game as it pertains to that credit card/debit card automatically gets banned. And second of all, since I'd have your credit card/debit card number on account, I can hide the latter portion of my EULA somewhere 3 quarters down where you'll definitely scroll past if you just scroll to the bottom and click "I agree" that if you do cheat, well hey, I have your CC/DC in my database, so as a penalty for griefing the legitimate players, I'm going to gouge you for another $100 for a game you may have paid $60 originally from.

How do you detect cheating? Easy. Statistics. Keep message logs in every game. This is extremely easy with Diablo type games in which it's not a single persistent server. Do you have (EG sdfgxfkbndmfg) joined the game. Level 1 (how they get to nm/hell is beyond me, glitch rushes, go figure). And now they're going to spam.

"BUY OUR ITEMS!!!! WWW.PHATLEWTZ.COM!"
"UNID SWORD OF NOOB SLAYING, RED RING OF DEATH, SHIELD OF ALL BLOCKING!"
"ALL $5 OR LESS! WHEN YOU PURCHASE, GET A FREE BOOTS OF BETTER LOOTS!"

And of course, those three lines don't come up at a rate of 100 WPM or however fast somebody types. They get copy-pasta'd in all of 2 seconds.

So, how many different "this is a bot" giveaways do we have?

A: a long string of consonants. I suppose this can be subverted with some vowels thrown in. Such as aserseraweasdfser. But stupid bots might get caught by this.
B: Level 1, or other extremely low level for the level of difficulty they're joining.
C: Usually this toon is "naked" or has no gear on themselves whatsoever. If you assign certain numerical values to gear for the sake of detecting this kind of thing, you'll see that these guys are easy outliers.
D: Caps spam. Once again, another easily subverted one, but some bots might do this. Another easy catch.
E: Website extensions. ".com", ".net", etc...
F: The $ symbol. Or heck, #.## or ##.## (price advertisements).
G: Ungodly WPM. In my example, that's 31 words. They'll pop out usually in 3 seconds. That's about 10 words a second, or 600 WPM. I'm not sure if any human alive can hit that. I'd be amazed at 300 WPM.

After every instance of a game closes down, just run this script over the chatlog. It should take all of a couple of seconds. Wham, instant ban.

It's really the same kind of crap that Gmail uses to send stuff to your spam filter. Imagine if these bots tried spamming your gmail. Wham, instantly to the spam bin. Why can't blizz do the EXACT SAME THING?

Worst to worst, heck, tell you what...

If I'm a game company and want to prevent this thing: create a special item called "sigil of the just", which gets obtained by reporting spammers like this. Make it be something along the power level of the annihilus small charm in D2. Bot comes on, someone goes "print screen", emails blizz the screenshot and their account name/character name on whom they want the item, and next time they log in, wham, brand new shiny piece of power, and one less bot on the realms. This is all very very simple.

And then, on your website, have a counter of "accounts banned today", and every so often, have a press release saying "over the last X months, we've banned X00,000 accounts. We take a hard stance against cheating and underhanded practices. Anyone caught doing this will have their account banned without warning."

So not only do I profiteer from cheaters underhanded policies (oh hey, nice item selling website. Account ban, gouge your credit card, try it again and the same thing will happen), but I also build my brand with upstanding legitimate players.

What's so difficult here?

This x 1000

Really, RMAH is a flimsy way to prevent Shady Item Shops from flourishing. In fact, it's just a bold statement that Blizzard wants their cut from sales from such Shops. I don't mind the concept of AH itself. Properly implemented, it will just be another way to trade, but the whole real money BS just reeks of whole awful micro-transactions and premium services Blizzard has been so crazy about lately...

Anyway, i think i won't be able to add anything of value to the discussion other then that at least one person (Ilyak1986) sees the core of the issue.
Kudos!

 

[Azure Sky]

snip

Your 1 and things under 3rd point contradict themselves.

Blizz can't track down RMT. But if they try to start RMT here, Blizz will make law happen!!1
Unless they just connect from outside.

AH regulates itself IF it's just players. Bots don't count as players. Even if a thousand of players wants to sell an item for $5, bots will get ten times more items and sell them for $2.5. People who want to buy the item won't care if it's from a legal player or a bot, thus forcing normal people to sell items cheaper. RMT bots will put their items cheaper, and it will happen over and over until everyone gives up on AH and just lets the bots sell items. Items become worthless, even more than in D2, because now you can legally sell them for real money.

1st and 3rd point have noting to do with one another.

Also, read my edits, sleep deprivation is leading me to miss things.

I said Point nr1 and stuff UNDER 3. The whole "Blizz will use the power of lawyers to combat them blablabla". Either Blizzard can't control them, or they can. Make up your damn mind.

What Blizzard can control:
Any and all sites/businesses that operate within the legal jurisdiction of the US. (IE:These are the people Blizz can actually sue and such.)
Any and all accounts connected to their servers. (But they still have to catch you/have reasonable suspicion first)

What Blizzard cannot control:
Any and all sites/Businesses outside the US. (As there is no way Blizzard can take legal action against someone overseas, let alone shut them down. This is probably the biggest problem they have at this point)
Any and all Transactions that happen outside of their servers.

In short, any third party transaction (Seeretty much all RMT to date) is basically untouchable.