Making money with Diablo 3

[Zer_]

So Diablo 3 finally has a release date. I am excited, but not because I have any real interest in playing the game. When they announced the ability to sell loot for real money I became interested in the idea of making serious money off of selling gear.

I am not expecting to work completely, theres a chance it will fail, but if I can make my rent purely through Diablo 3 I will be a happy man.

My question is, will you buy gear with real money? Do you think it will work? and what class do you think will be the most popular?

I doubt it'd work. Only if you decided on secondary revenue through streaming your play while you farm, you can make money off advertising during streams. I'm not interested in Diablo 3 because of the Real Cash AH and their Always Online DRM, but I'll be even more dissapointed if the D3 economy gets fucked over with overpriced items.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Supplemental income: Yes. But D3 will not pay your bills. Most you can hope for is perhaps to pay for a WoW account or two per month.
Only putting in the hours farming drops (and I mean HOURS) could you possibly make enough money to "live" off of, but I doubt you can pay all the costs of running D3 that long with it.

Electric + Internet + Time not working for assured salary = no profit.

 

[DanielBrown]

You don't make real money.

You make Battle.net Balance. You can use it to buy blizzard games and WoW services. And more when they add it.

You can still maybe go the illegal way of selling items and characters on ebay/craigslist. But I have a feeling they'll be watching for it. They -really- do not want it happening in D3.

Did they change it then?
Haven't really kept myself up to date with D3 news, but back when it was announced they said you could link the auction house to a Paypal account and collect the money you make. All while giving Blizzard a cut of the cake, of course.

OT: Good luck competing with all the bots. I'll probably put up some stuff once in a while, just to try it out, but I won't be buying anything from it.

 

[Therumancer]

You won't be able to compete with the Chinese gold farmers.

This. Chinese farmers will annihilate the economy quicker than a boxing fight between Mike Tyson and a newborn baby.

Maybe, I am remembering how we had those bans in "The Old Republic" over people tripping code meant to identify "credit farmers". I wouldn't be surprised if Diablo 3 rolls out with some similar automated code that makes farming at the level the Chinese do nearly impossible. I've noticed in ToR we've seen a lot less people selling credits and such than other MMOs. Given the online nature of D3 and the lessons Blizzard had learned, I'd hope they put some serious thought into the in-game economy and how to control this kind of thing.

Truthfully though I think they should just outright ban those with Asian IPs and such from playing on US/EU servers at all, no matter where the account is from. I'd also make US servers dedicated "english language" servers meaning that someone who can't speak and understand english is by definition not allowed to play there. That means players that aren't responsive or can't communicate can be reported and kicked simply for that reason alone. Not nice, but again it would deal with a lot of the problems as well.

Once you start dealing with a situation where to farm the Chinese would need players who are bi-lingual in english to pass tests, heavily disguised IPs, foreign copies of the game, and then have to work around code intended to recognize and auto-ban people for patterns recognized as farming behavior (ie just like ToR), it's not going to be profitable for
them to set it up, just to wind up getting accounts constantly banned when people inevitably complain about their spam to move products.


At any rate some of this they probably aren't doing, but at least the code is probably going to be there, and that alone is likely to help. I figure if Bioware doesn't do something to protect the economy it will die and all the work they put into it will be for nothing. Assuming people use it enough for it to be an issue that is.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

The best way to make money with Diablo 3 is to not buy it. You save 60 dollars and you also don't have to endure that travesty of a game. It is a financial and emotional win.

 

[Loop Stricken]

Well this is... interesting. On one hand i have vowed NEVER to by items or any DLC that does not as additional functionality but selling it, yes that is a nice proposition the only thing is will i fall so behind in getting my items i will NEED to buy better gear to get gear with selling and further will i need to buy items to finish the game?

If i have to buy items to finish the game the game is dead in my opinion but with no online PVP battles just no being able to sell times people wan will not kill the game as long as I can finish it which is my problem with most "Premium game items" is that if you opponent has them you are dead no matter how bad they suck and how god you are, but with that gone it is fairly hard to see a real downside other than "OMG CORPORATION MAKING MONEY BLAAAHHHRGGH!"

... could I get this comment again, but in English?

The best way to make money with Diablo 3 is to not buy it. You save 60 dollars and you also don't have to endure that travesty of a game. It is a financial and emotional win.

No no, tell us how you really feel.

Anyway, I signed up to WoW's annual pass which means I get Diablo III for free. Clearly I win.

 

[Odbarc]

Gold farmers will likely break the prices of things so you'll never really 'make money' even if you found some godly epic rare unique. The AH will likely only be able to sell regular things, grindable things, in mass quantity for really cheap. Like, pennies.

Unless you end up selling, like, EVERYTHING, you probably won't come near paying off the game itself. Which is kind of a good thing for anyone and everyone who buys.

I'm sure there'll be some rare case of someone paying WAY TOO MUCH for something that's genuinely godly.

 

[VladG]

Doubt you'll end up making any real money unless you are EXTREMELY lucky. I expect prices to be low overall, with the most expensive items at maybe 5-10$. And I'm talking grind-for-a-week-untill-it-drops rare.

Personally I'll be happy if I can pay for half my WoW sub with the crap I'll sell (if any)

 

[Aeonknight]

You won't be able to compete with the Chinese gold farmers.

This. Chinese farmers will annihilate the economy quicker than a boxing fight between Mike Tyson and a newborn baby.

Maybe, I am remembering how we had those bans in "The Old Republic" over people tripping code meant to identify "credit farmers". I wouldn't be surprised if Diablo 3 rolls out with some similar automated code that makes farming at the level the Chinese do nearly impossible. I've noticed in ToR we've seen a lot less people selling credits and such than other MMOs. Given the online nature of D3 and the lessons Blizzard had learned, I'd hope they put some serious thought into the in-game economy and how to control this kind of thing.

Truthfully though I think they should just outright ban those with Asian IPs and such from playing on US/EU servers at all, no matter where the account is from. I'd also make US servers dedicated "english language" servers meaning that someone who can't speak and understand english is by definition not allowed to play there. That means players that aren't responsive or can't communicate can be reported and kicked simply for that reason alone. Not nice, but again it would deal with a lot of the problems as well.

Once you start dealing with a situation where to farm the Chinese would need players who are bi-lingual in english to pass tests, heavily disguised IPs, foreign copies of the game, and then have to work around code intended to recognize and auto-ban people for patterns recognized as farming behavior (ie just like ToR), it's not going to be profitable for
them to set it up, just to wind up getting accounts constantly banned when people inevitably complain about their spam to move products.


At any rate some of this they probably aren't doing, but at least the code is probably going to be there, and that alone is likely to help. I figure if Bioware doesn't do something to protect the economy it will die and all the work they put into it will be for nothing. Assuming people use it enough for it to be an issue that is.

The problem with even trying to ban chinese gold farmers is that this idea actually makes what they're doing legitimate by the game's own rules. Most MMO's try to ban RMT for sake of preserving the in game economy, or just because they don't like the idea of some 3rd party making money off of their intellectual property.

Blizzard in this case is fully embracing the idea and creating avenues for the average joe to do it. Hell from the sounds of it, it's going to be a core aspect in gear progression. Blizzard wants the players to interact with the auction house. So how would it be justified to ban RMT for doing it?

And even if they could justify it... Blizzard will probably take a small cut of the profit on each transaction. Thus banning the RMT would actually cost them money. Sorry OP, the idea seems nice but it will never work.

 

[Therumancer]

You won't be able to compete with the Chinese gold farmers.

This. Chinese farmers will annihilate the economy quicker than a boxing fight between Mike Tyson and a newborn baby.

Maybe, I am remembering how we had those bans in "The Old Republic" over people tripping code meant to identify "credit farmers". I wouldn't be surprised if Diablo 3 rolls out with some similar automated code that makes farming at the level the Chinese do nearly impossible. I've noticed in ToR we've seen a lot less people selling credits and such than other MMOs. Given the online nature of D3 and the lessons Blizzard had learned, I'd hope they put some serious thought into the in-game economy and how to control this kind of thing.

Truthfully though I think they should just outright ban those with Asian IPs and such from playing on US/EU servers at all, no matter where the account is from. I'd also make US servers dedicated "english language" servers meaning that someone who can't speak and understand english is by definition not allowed to play there. That means players that aren't responsive or can't communicate can be reported and kicked simply for that reason alone. Not nice, but again it would deal with a lot of the problems as well.

Once you start dealing with a situation where to farm the Chinese would need players who are bi-lingual in english to pass tests, heavily disguised IPs, foreign copies of the game, and then have to work around code intended to recognize and auto-ban people for patterns recognized as farming behavior (ie just like ToR), it's not going to be profitable for
them to set it up, just to wind up getting accounts constantly banned when people inevitably complain about their spam to move products.


At any rate some of this they probably aren't doing, but at least the code is probably going to be there, and that alone is likely to help. I figure if Bioware doesn't do something to protect the economy it will die and all the work they put into it will be for nothing. Assuming people use it enough for it to be an issue that is.

The problem with even trying to ban chinese gold farmers is that this idea actually makes what they're doing legitimate by the game's own rules. Most MMO's try to ban RMT for sake of preserving the in game economy, or just because they don't like the idea of some 3rd party making money off of their intellectual property.

Blizzard in this case is fully embracing the idea and creating avenues for the average joe to do it. Hell from the sounds of it, it's going to be a core aspect in gear progression. Blizzard wants the players to interact with the auction house. So how would it be justified to ban RMT for doing it?

And even if they could justify it... Blizzard will probably take a small cut of the profit on each transaction. Thus banning the RMT would actually cost them money. Sorry OP, the idea seems nice but it will never work.

I'm not the original poster.

The thing to consider though is that a certain type of person and their behaviors will ruin the game and it's economy. Blizzard has a vested interest in preventing that from happening, as monopolies (we're talking about the ruining of economies as opposed to nessicarly the farming itself) and specific groups of people taking over the game and controlling the flow of goods tends to ruin it. A big part of the whole "Chinese Gold Farmer" thing is that they didn't just farm but also played the AH, taking over farming locations for things like primal essences and forcing other people out, and then setting the prices for them and selling the gold to players (this is what some of the Lyrics in the song "Ni Hao: A Gold Farmer's Story" are about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dkkf5NEIo0

Simply getting a cut from the transactions doesn't help if the entire economy winds up getting wrecked.

 

[Vigormortis]

Considering the prices and rarity of items can be set by Blizzard based on how popular things become, there's a chance that some items can become quite expensive. Especially if Blizzard decides to decrease the natural drop rate of certain items in the game. (which they can do. they've already discussed changing drops rates "as needed")

However, considering how long one would have to grind to find even one of these "rare" items, and how little cash you'll actually make off of it at sale, AND the fact that Blizzard takes a cut of the money you make, there's little chance you could make money off of this venture.

Unless you go out and buy several copies of the game to run on several accounts, and have some method of doing so without wasting your time, you won't turn a profit of any kind. Hell, you probably couldn't even afford food daily unless you grind 24/7/365. Even then, it's not likely.

 

[cookyy2k]

Turning something you enjoy into your job is the quickest way to ruin it. Suddenly you're not gaming because you want to or because you enjoy it. You're gaming to pay the bills, whether you want to or not, for how ever many hours it takes. It wouldn't be as good as it sounds. Also I'm skeptical as everyone else, I seriously doubt a decent rate of return.

 

[Jesse Willadson]

Huh didn't expect this kind of response
Anyway, as previously stated I don't have high hopes. I am not really interested in the game as a hole actually. If the selling gear thing doesn't work Ill just play till my friends get bored and then never touch it again (unless it blows me away)