Diablo III's Auction House

[Azure Sky]

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!

Treating your player base as criminals right off the boat is the fastest way to get an en-mass boycott like you have never seen. Not to mention it probably isn't even legal.

 

[Ilyak1986]

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.

They can't take legal action against them--but on the same note, those companies cannot take legal action against blizzard.

So, once again, if I knew that Chinese gold farmers were going to be an issue in my popular game, I would require a credit card number for a purchase. And once you've purchased the game, then hello, you just wrote me a blank check. Every single week, I can do a server maintenance on all my X million (really not that many) and simply see if that credit card is still legal. Aka have a $0.0001 per month subscription plan, just to check whether or not your credit card is still valid.

Now, when I catch you trying to sell gold because you run a Chinese gold farming sweatshop, then oh hey, how nice, you can't take legal action against me.

Now your account (with its attached credit card) buys a "token of imbeciles" for $1,000 USD. The "BUY OUR LOOTZ" spamming bot that tried to advertise your service now has its inventory filled with "token of imbeciles" tokens that you can't remove, and just to make sure, we permaban your account, permaban your CD key, and permaban that credit card number from our servers, AFTER raping it for all it's worth.

And the best part? We just put that in the EULA, which most players don't bother to read anyway because it's written in thick and dense legalese. And then some shmo will say "oh hey guys, you really shouldn't be running a black market activity otherwise you'll get taken to the cleaners". Who's going to protest that? What, is someone going to sue for illegality because they can't run a black market activity?

My analogy is to a gym owner (or other owner of a public place) who charges for some sort of membership. Now, some douchebags come in and causes a massive commotion (or do some other very unpleasant thing) to the point that you're losing customers. Well, how do you retain that revenue? Gouge the douchebags!

See, what blizzard has done is rather than make RMT (real money trading) an illiquid, black-market activity, which carried all sorts of risks of having your account stolen (extremely insidious in WoW, and a loss of all characters on a single player character account in Diablo) to getting scammed, your credit card gouged by some Chinese guys, etc..., now it's all a riskless out-in-the-open activity. Blizzard is blatantly selling power here. Sure, blizzard itself isn't, but players are--and blizzard gets a cut from that.

This whole RMAH isn't a way to cut down on the black marketeers. It's blizzard saying "oh hey--this is another way to monetize the game! Why should the black marketeers get all of the revenue from this cash stream when we can provide liquidity and get all sorts of fees as market makers?"

So in a sense, blizzard itself is playing the role of the black marketers. Because I really want to know how there was an overwhelming amount of players that clamored for RMT in Diablo, because on the bnet forums, the reactions range from mildly condoning to abjectly against. (Most in the negative categories).

Anybody that's saying that blizzard has their fans in mind and does this only with noble intentions, such as lack of LAN support, RMT, etc... needs to get their head out of the nether regions of their rectum and realize this:

Blizzard is now part of a public company--Activision Blizzard (ticker ATVI). Meaning, it no longer first and foremost answers to fans--it first and foremost answers to shareholders.

"What are you going to do to prevent piracy?"
"How can you further gain revenue out of a one time sale?"

Etc. etc. etc.

Joe Gamer cares about how the wizard will stack up against the monk, or how she'll be balanced between having to stand still to cast powerful spells, or resort to weaker ones on the move.

Joseph Shareholder doesn't give a damn about the HP of a marine, or the damage algorithm behind a black mage's spell scaling system. Joseph Investor only knows that he has a financial stake in Activision Blizzard, and as a publicly traded corporation, Blizzard's first and foremost priority isn't to provide the best gaming experiences for its fans--but to maximize shareholder value.

As long as blizzard can get away with being a brand name in the RTS/Action RPG/MMO space and milk its legions of fans (because what's a one-time purchase of $60 in order to see new parts of the world of Sanctuary and how the fight against the Prime Evils continues? Even if it's a one-time playthrough, at least it will be memorable for a long time), one of which is myself, it will cut as many corners as possible until sales show there's a slump, perhaps because a new upstart gaming company, privately owned and operated, whose overlord isn't the shareholder but the gamer, comes out with a quality game. At which point blizzard just goes "I see your upstart indy shop and raise you our metric fuckton of cash thrown at developers and marketers", rips off the ideas from the indy company in an expansion and goes "GFG".

Also, in terms of my "disingenuous" EULA, every bit of the EULA is there to be read, understood, and complied with. Do I read them? Never. Why? Because to me, they translate to "play the game legitimately, and you have nothing to be afraid of. Cut corners and screw over our game universe, and we can drop your CD key and say 'thanks for the cash, feel free to try again after you purchase another copy of our game'".

Well, that hasn't stopped gold farming sweatshops. So what will? Hitting them where it hurts: in their pocketbooks.

See, I'm not just someone who enjoys video games. I'm also someone with an engineering degree, a master's degree in statistics, who was one course short of an economics minor and has worked in the financial industry. I have a general intuition about how these kinds of things work and about risk/reward. To gold farmers, the reward far outweighs the risk of getting a CD key or 10 banned. Massive fines levied on credit cards that the gold farmers may not be wanting to take a risk to pay, or may not even be able to--because say I devised an algorithm that could through your character's play and their chat, decide correctly whether it's part of a gold farming operation--so rather than fine you oh, $5 before banning your CD key/account/credit card, I say "well, they're a gold farming operation and can't take legal action against me. I'm going to keep charging that credit card until it's maxed out. And if it has a $100,000 limit, so much the better"...well, odds are, that gold farming operation will probably never ever come within a mile of my game world, which is good for me as a developer because I get to keep my reputation as a developer that creates fun game worlds without the taint of RMT, it's good for the players because they don't have to worry about black marketers ruining the economy, and it's good for me the developer because it pads my bottom line quite considerably.

And the only losers are those who were doing illegal things against my EULA to begin with, so screw them. Oh, and hey, if they're in an overseas nation, then I might as well send a huge thank you note to them for so generously helping my bottom line and covering the salary for one of my developers for an entire year, and laugh all the way to the bank.

 

[Ilyak1986]

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!

Treating your player base as criminals right off the boat is the fastest way to get an en-mass boycott like you have never seen. Not to mention it probably isn't even legal.

How is it treating your player base as criminals? If I were developing a game, this is what I'd do:

In order to install the game, you have to enter a CD key. Once you enter that key, I'm going to go to my database of CD keys and grep the key you just entered. If I have a 40 character CD key, that's A-Z, a-z, 0-9, which makes for 62 different characters. 62^40 is a ridiculously huge number. To put it into perspective, Avogadro's number--the number to describe how many molecules of something there are if you took that something's atomic mass in grams, is 6.02*10^23. So this number is oh...bigger than that by about 20 orders of magnitude.

Now, after you input your CD key, I check to see that "oh hey, you have a legit game, here's your multiplayer, your offline single player, your LAN, the whole nine". But if you're going to play online, where and only where you get access to special realmwide items, loot, quests, modding packages, etc. etc., then I just need to make sure I can link up your account with a proper credit card number. Simply, this deters cheaters so we can fine them.

This is the same kind of logic that says "oh noes, the patriot act is infringing on our freedoms!", when that's a whole lot of baloney as well. Where are all of the people whose freedoms are being infringed upon? Just act like regular, normal people, and you'll probably forget the patriot act even exists. But oh hey, if you want to try and blow up a building such as the Willis Tower in Chicago, now we can find you, put you behind bars, try you, convict you, drop you into a boiling vat of acid, etc...

It isn't that the playerbase is a bunch of criminals, but that there are criminals out there. And what better way to deter them than to monetize them until their eyes weep blood?

 

[Azure Sky]

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!

Treating your player base as criminals right off the boat is the fastest way to get an en-mass boycott like you have never seen. Not to mention it probably isn't even legal.

How is it treating your player base as criminals? If I were developing a game, this is what I'd do:

In order to install the game, you have to enter a CD key. Once you enter that key, I'm going to go to my database of CD keys and grep the key you just entered. If I have a 40 character CD key, that's A-Z, a-z, 0-9, which makes for 62 different characters. 62^40 is a ridiculously huge number. To put it into perspective, Avogadro's number--the number to describe how many molecules of something there are if you took that something's atomic mass in grams, is 6.02*10^23. So this number is oh...bigger than that by about 20 orders of magnitude.

Now, after you input your CD key, I check to see that "oh hey, you have a legit game, here's your multiplayer, your offline single player, your LAN, the whole nine". But if you're going to play online, where and only where you get access to special realmwide items, loot, quests, modding packages, etc. etc., then I just need to make sure I can link up your account with a proper credit card number. Simply, this deters cheaters so we can fine them.

This is the same kind of logic that says "oh noes, the patriot act is infringing on our freedoms!", when that's a whole lot of baloney as well. Where are all of the people whose freedoms are being infringed upon? Just act like regular, normal people, and you'll probably forget the patriot act even exists. But oh hey, if you want to try and blow up a building such as the Willis Tower in Chicago, now we can find you, put you behind bars, try you, convict you, drop you into a boiling vat of acid, etc...

It isn't that the playerbase is a bunch of criminals, but that there are criminals out there. And what better way to deter them than to monetize them until their eyes weep blood?

See:UBIsoft

 

[captainwalrus]

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.

Then I guess I respectfully disagree. Given enough time, Player A can reach power parity with Player B, despite Player B having spent cash in the AH. All the AH does is allow Player B to bypass the grinding to reach that point. Player B does not gain any statistical benefit for reaching that point faster, and if Player A so desires, he can grind it out and eventually attain the same gear that Player B bought and have the same, exact stats and skills as Player B.

 

[Ilyak1986]

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!

Treating your player base as criminals right off the boat is the fastest way to get an en-mass boycott like you have never seen. Not to mention it probably isn't even legal.

How is it treating your player base as criminals? If I were developing a game, this is what I'd do:

In order to install the game, you have to enter a CD key. Once you enter that key, I'm going to go to my database of CD keys and grep the key you just entered. If I have a 40 character CD key, that's A-Z, a-z, 0-9, which makes for 62 different characters. 62^40 is a ridiculously huge number. To put it into perspective, Avogadro's number--the number to describe how many molecules of something there are if you took that something's atomic mass in grams, is 6.02*10^23. So this number is oh...bigger than that by about 20 orders of magnitude.

Now, after you input your CD key, I check to see that "oh hey, you have a legit game, here's your multiplayer, your offline single player, your LAN, the whole nine". But if you're going to play online, where and only where you get access to special realmwide items, loot, quests, modding packages, etc. etc., then I just need to make sure I can link up your account with a proper credit card number. Simply, this deters cheaters so we can fine them.

This is the same kind of logic that says "oh noes, the patriot act is infringing on our freedoms!", when that's a whole lot of baloney as well. Where are all of the people whose freedoms are being infringed upon? Just act like regular, normal people, and you'll probably forget the patriot act even exists. But oh hey, if you want to try and blow up a building such as the Willis Tower in Chicago, now we can find you, put you behind bars, try you, convict you, drop you into a boiling vat of acid, etc...

It isn't that the playerbase is a bunch of criminals, but that there are criminals out there. And what better way to deter them than to monetize them until their eyes weep blood?

See:UBIsoft

Elaborate.

 

[Azure Sky]

See:UBIsoft

Elaborate.

Well, I cbf finding all the material for the same reason I dislike the idea. Lack of Care.

From memory though UBIsoft tried something a little while ago, twas slightly different but the outcome was similar.

Lets face it, what you are describing is a really malicious form of DRM.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Why would I be spending my money on virtual armor when I could be spending it on virtual hats? Or real hats? Or, for that matter, real armor?

 

[fundayz]

Then I guess I respectfully disagree. Given enough time, Player A can reach power parity with Player B, despite Player B having spent cash in the AH. All the AH does is allow Player B to bypass the grinding to reach that point. Player B does not gain any statistical benefit for reaching that point faster, and if Player A so desires, he can grind it out and eventually attain the same gear that Player B bought and have the same, exact stats and skills as Player B.

You are looking at the wrong thing. You focus on potential power when you need to be looking at actual power.

Do you believe that it is fair for Player B to use real currency to buy an advantage that will help him advance through the game faster and more easily than Player A, even though they are equal in skill and time played?

Do you believe that it is fair for Player A to be at a statistical disadvantage for the entire time that it takes him to catch up to Player B?

How do you expect Player A to catch up to Player B when Player B has already obtained a statistical advantage (remember that they are equal in skill and play time)?

In the case that Player A does inexplicably catch up to Player B, what is stopping Player B from simply purchasing better items and more gold once again?

As you can see, a paying player will always have an advantage over a non-paying player even if everything else is equal between them.

P.S. We haven't even factored in the havoc that RMT companies will wreck on the GAH and RMAH.

 

[Ilyak1986]

See:UBIsoft

Elaborate.

Well, I cbf finding all the material for the same reason I dislike the idea. Lack of Care.

From memory though UBIsoft tried something a little while ago, twas slightly different but the outcome was similar.

Lets face it, what you are describing is a really malicious form of DRM.

Actually, my stance on DRM is this: there obviously needs to be a little bit in order to prevent day zero piracy. But the way you build brand loyalty with consumers isn't to treat them like criminals, and give them a quick one-and-done DRM access. Encrypt all the code so as to slow down cracks, have the users log on once and say "yeah this is my code, my game is legit, this is proof I gave you my one day's worth of work for a game I'll enjoy for several years", and wham, the game world is theirs to play legitimately in.

And in fact, for an added bonus, I might even say "since I'm such a nice guy, I'll let you create two other accounts for your brothers/best friends, so as to not require 2 separate keys to allow a family to play together, with the restriction that the IP must be near identical on log on.

But, if you try to create a black market, that's not DRM. That's not piracy prevention or whatnot. That's prevention of out-and-out asshattery that gives no damn about the world in which the rest of the players play. Clearly, when it comes to Chinese gold farming, a CD key ban is no deterrent, when after their costs, they can just make another account, grind a toon up to 80 in two days (seriously, I started Friday evening and now have a level 84 sorc with full Tal Rasha's set, 45% wartravs, 27% FCR spirit, a couple of ist runes, and am just looking to replace a 28 MF nagelring with a 10% FCR ring with some fire and poison resists. I have a full inventory of all sorts of stuff I'm looking to trade away, 26 pgems, and so on).

If an outfit is out to profiteer off of a persistent game world, whether an MMO or hack and slash, banning CD keys will do little to deter them.

So, more drastic action needs to be taken.

So, how do we take advantage of the fact that these operations are primarily overseas? Gouge them economically. Because put it this way: Americans value their time. They live in a first-world nation. They have better jobs to do than to grind for items to sell for next to nothing on the black market. After all, a guy my age, if he has enough technical talent to program a D2 bot (or even how to set one up) can find a much better paying job.

Chinese kids? Not so much.

So, what do we do?

EULA: Dear Chinese gold farmers and all you other people who like to create black markets: try us. We'll find out about your activities so fast, and when we do, we'll gouge you so hard in the pocketbook that you wish you would never have messed with us! Now bring it on.

 

[Azure Sky]

See:UBIsoft

Elaborate.

Well, I cbf finding all the material for the same reason I dislike the idea. Lack of Care.

From memory though UBIsoft tried something a little while ago, twas slightly different but the outcome was similar.

Lets face it, what you are describing is a really malicious form of DRM.

Actually, my stance on DRM is this: there obviously needs to be a little bit in order to prevent day zero piracy. But the way you build brand loyalty with consumers isn't to treat them like criminals, and give them a quick one-and-done DRM access. Encrypt all the code so as to slow down cracks, have the users log on once and say "yeah this is my code, my game is legit, this is proof I gave you my one day's worth of work for a game I'll enjoy for several years", and wham, the game world is theirs to play legitimately in.

And in fact, for an added bonus, I might even say "since I'm such a nice guy, I'll let you create two other accounts for your brothers/best friends, so as to not require 2 separate keys to allow a family to play together, with the restriction that the IP must be near identical on log on.

But, if you try to create a black market, that's not DRM. That's not piracy prevention or whatnot. That's prevention of out-and-out asshattery that gives no damn about the world in which the rest of the players play. Clearly, when it comes to Chinese gold farming, a CD key ban is no deterrent, when after their costs, they can just make another account, grind a toon up to 80 in two days (seriously, I started Friday evening and now have a level 84 sorc with full Tal Rasha's set, 45% wartravs, 27% FCR spirit, a couple of ist runes, and am just looking to replace a 28 MF nagelring with a 10% FCR ring with some fire and poison resists. I have a full inventory of all sorts of stuff I'm looking to trade away, 26 pgems, and so on).

If an outfit is out to profiteer off of a persistent game world, whether an MMO or hack and slash, banning CD keys will do little to deter them.

So, more drastic action needs to be taken.

So, how do we take advantage of the fact that these operations are primarily overseas? Gouge them economically. Because put it this way: Americans value their time. They live in a first-world nation. They have better jobs to do than to grind for items to sell for next to nothing on the black market. After all, a guy my age, if he has enough technical talent to program a D2 bot (or even how to set one up) can find a much better paying job.

Chinese kids? Not so much.

So, what do we do?

EULA: Dear Chinese gold farmers and all you other people who like to create black markets: try us. We'll find out about your activities so fast, and when we do, we'll gouge you so hard in the pocketbook that you wish you would never have messed with us! Now bring it on.

Funny thing is, If D3's AH turns out the way I suspect it will, it will force those RMTers to be nothing more than a company of people that play the game for the sole reason to cash out at the AH. Which is probably going to be an autostabilizer to the economy, not to mention they won't be breaking the EULA unless they bot.

Here's to hoping that they give Warden 2.0 an upgrade.

 

[fundayz]

EULA: Dear Chinese gold farmers and all you other people who like to create black markets: try us. We'll find out about your activities so fast, and when we do, we'll gouge you so hard in the pocketbook that you wish you would never have messed with us! Now bring it on.

You realize that gold/item farmers usually use stolen credit cards and accounts for that exact reason right?

You would just be charging random people who had their CC/account stolen. This makes your charge an unauthorized transaction that WILL be reversed by credit card companies.

Welcome to the real world. Things aren't that simple.

Funny thing is, If D3's AH turns out the way I suspect it will, it will force those RMTers to be nothing more than a company of people that play the game for the sole reason to cash out at the AH. Which is probably going to be an autostabilizer to the economy, not to mention they won't be breaking the EULA unless they bot.

Here's to hoping that they give Warden 2.0 an upgrade.

RMT companies are ALREADY nothing but groups of people that play game for the sole reason of cashing out. The only difference is that it will now be EASIER for them to do as the game gives them a wider customer base and legitimate ways of doing it.

I don't understand what makes you think that this will auto-stabilize the economy. Regular players will NOT be able to compete against the prices set by gold/item farming groups.

 

[DarkTenka]

I dont see how this changes ANYTHING at all.. RMT is/was/and will always exist. You nay-sayers seem to forget that you have NEVER played a multiplayer RPG game that didnt have players who RMT'd .. your ideal game-world is IMPOSSIBLE. As long as two human beings can give each other money and can at the same time somehow give each other items in game .. there is GOING to be RMT. Deal with it.

At least this way people arent making money out of blizzard without them getting something in return.

At least this way there will be a significant reduction in the amount of people getting scammed and crying to blizzard about how their accs/items/money has been stolen.

At least this way it gives US - the gamers a way of competing AGAINST the chinese gold farmers by allowing is to sell off our possibly $100 epic unique items or what ever.

 

[theultimateend]

I'm almost unable to believe anyone thinks this won't go over perfectly.

I mean, I can think of tons of terrible apocalypse theories, but I'm not silly enough to think they'll actually happen.

 

[Ilyak1986]

I dont see how this changes ANYTHING at all.. RMT is/was/and will always exist. You nay-sayers seem to forget that you have NEVER played a multiplayer RPG game that didnt have players who RMT'd .. your ideal game-world is IMPOSSIBLE. As long as two human beings can give each other money and can at the same time somehow give each other items in game .. there is GOING to be RMT. Deal with it.

At least this way people arent making money out of blizzard without them getting something in return.

At least this way there will be a significant reduction in the amount of people getting scammed and crying to blizzard about how their accs/items/money has been stolen.

At least this way it gives US - the gamers a way of competing AGAINST the chinese gold farmers by allowing is to sell off our possibly $100 epic unique items or what ever.

Are you oblivious to how the Diablo economy works? The entire reason this auction house will be a mess is that gold farmers can undercut people to ridiculous amounts, meaning that the U.S. players in fact WON'T get to compete against the gold farmers. All this does is provide the gold farmers liquidity.

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

Well, seeing as how no one has done this here, I'll bring up TotalHalibut's points he made about this in the previous D3 thread. Basically, I agree with the points he brings up.

 

[DarkTenka]

Are you oblivious to how the Diablo economy works? The entire reason this auction house will be a mess is that gold farmers can undercut people to ridiculous amounts, meaning that the U.S. players in fact WON'T get to compete against the gold farmers. All this does is provide the gold farmers liquidity.

Are you serious? you realise that most D2 players were ok with NEVER making any money right? Most players didnt even touch RMT .. and played for and traded entirely for in game currency/items.

Hell id be fine if I sold a WF for $1. You're telling me that gold farmers can UNDERCUT when they actually CARE about how much profit theyre making?

If they undercut .. we undercut them back .. eventually the items themselves arent worth RMT and nobody makes any money. That wont happen though .. when I say "compete" i didnt mean it gives us a chance at business venture in D3 Items (although that could entirely be possible as well). I meant it gives us an easy means of selling the occasional item, whereas before we had none unless we had a really trustworthy person to sell to.

But hey if they want to undercut until everything is value-less im fine with that too, because then it just returns to IN-GAME currency trading rather than RMT.

 

[Azure Sky]

I don't understand what makes you think that this will auto-stabilize the economy. Regular players will NOT be able to compete against the prices set by gold/item farming groups.

The entire reason this auction house will be a mess is that gold farmers can undercut people to ridiculous amounts, meaning that the U.S. players in fact WON'T get to compete against the gold farmers. All this does is provide the gold farmers liquidity.

It seems that both of you have overlooked one of the key points that Blizzard have stated about the RMT AH.
The 3 fees attached to them.

Now, if you intend to sell items for profit to then cash out into paypal or whatever they let you link it with, you have no right to ***** and moan about what they do, as you are doing the SAME THING.

If you do not however do the above, you have less fees in the AH, letting you undercut the above past a break-even listing and still turn a profit.

 

[AlotFirst]

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/08/02/blizzard-on-diablo-3-gold-farmers-and-players-really-doing-the-same-activity/
-Executive producer Rob Pardo replied: ?Theoretically that?s true, but I mean there?s really nothing? what?s the difference between a player that plays the game a lot and a gold farmer? I mean they?re really doing the same activity.?-

I wonder how many of these mistakes it will take him to be promoted to Executed Producer.