Man Claims He's Made $10,000 Off Diablo III

[Soak]

I kinda experienced that myself. Though, i despise our "real-world" capitalistic economics, considering it as a broken part of our social system which turned against it's means of supporting social life, i got interested in understanding the structures of economics as well and find it remarkable how they get reproduced in game-environments. Now, i haven't actually made "real" money out of that, considering my disposition against the matter and that fun in games is something else for me, but at the same time, proper trading as part of a game became appealing to me and often the money i'm not spending, while constantly growing by trading in a game where you could invest real money, has a wicked satisfaction.

Also, i bet Blizz is rather gratefull for that, either if it's just a claim or true, they'll get their share out of it. Won't make to much of a difference on their pile of money, but what counts for them are the growing numbers.

 

[The Lunatic]

So, basically, if you put the hours of sweat shop and turn a fun game into a monotonous slog for half a year, you can make some decent money for a few months with no insurance of ever getting that money again.


Or... You could get a job.

 

[Doom972]

I don't see how a random number generated on a server has a value outside of that virtual world, in which it has a use.
Also, what's the point of buying the best items? Once you get the best items, you have nothing more to do in the game.

 

[Ympulse]

Wow I haven't seen a message like this since the days forums went unmoderated, "Hey guys I discovered how to get rich by doing nothing at all, click this not at all suspicious link now!"

If someone dug into this, they wouldn't by any chance find that this very trustworthy enthusiastic young man works in the Blizzard PR department?

Amazing how you drones missed this.

Quoting because none of you have a clue.

 

[JSoup]

I like that Neopets was brought into this. Neopets is actually a really good simulator for learning how harsh a trade based society is, the ways to survive in it and how one might properly go about becoming a total dick.

I wonder if I ever traded with this guy back in the days when I played Neopets.

 

[Soak]

I don't see how a random number generated on a server has a value outside of that virtual world, in which it has a use.
Also, what's the point of buying the best items? Once you get the best items, you have nothing more to do in the game.

It may be better to keep your point of view, maybe you even know the answers to your questions, but i'll try to put it together and clarify a bit.
On your first point: At first, it may only be a random generated number, but ingame, this number becomes an item, which has clear ingame use, in some way a resource and thereby becomes desireable by players, of whom in return, given the opportunity, some are willing to pay for to recieve, just as you are willing to pay to recieve a copy of a game. This may not seem an obvious simile, considering the game had production costs and such, but it if you think it through, it is, considering to receife the item, due to the mechanics of the game, there was effort needed, just as were when making the game. Thereby the random number-> item gets value. Now second, you question why anyone would want to buy the best item, considering this is kind of the goal of this game. Now this is rather simple psychology. As the game sets the goal of always becoming stronger, every step potentially getting you closer to that goal will probably make you feel like you achieved something, give you satisfaction, thereby every single step becomes desirable and for some this includes buying better items. Considering you can never be sure you have the best items ever and the game lets you experience non-linear satisfaction, it stays desirable (Skinner box experiment proved it). It may even be enough to just have an item, as is enriches their "ingame-wealth", which may be desirable for some by itself.

And if you still question how this virtual world resembles to our "real world", think about it, cause this is actually part of our current economy, considering our (the societies) ideology of money and wealth in numbers already surpassed the actual values of whatever you might consider that matters, be it to provide basic needs, or happiness, or whatever. Not everyone may agree with me, some claim that the bigger financial and bank institutes still monitor the currency and transition from resources to money, but i think, that the biggest part of our economy consists of actually trading with virtual goods, shoving numbers around, which in reality represent nothing, neither anything that matters, nor of matter.

The only real effect of this is an increasing social inequality, what isn't only effecting statistical numbers, but real peoples lifes.

And here we came from D3 Items to economy in a nutshell.

 

[Doom972]

I don't see how a random number generated on a server has a value outside of that virtual world, in which it has a use.
Also, what's the point of buying the best items? Once you get the best items, you have nothing more to do in the game.

It may be better to keep your point of view, maybe you even know the answers to your questions, but i'll try to put it together and clarify a bit.
On your first point: At first, it may only be a random generated number, but ingame, this number becomes an item, which has clear ingame use, in some way a resource and thereby becomes desireable by players, of whom in return, given the opportunity, some are willing to pay for to recieve, just as you are willing to pay to recieve a copy of a game. This may not seem an obvious simile, considering the game had production costs and such, but it if you think it through, it is, considering to receife the item, due to the mechanics of the game, there was effort needed, just as were when making the game. Thereby the random number-> item gets value. Now second, you question why anyone would want to buy the best item, considering this is kind of the goal of this game. Now this is rather simple psychology. As the game sets the goal of always becoming stronger, every step potentially getting you closer to that goal will probably make you feel like you achieved something, give you satisfaction, thereby every single step becomes desirable and for some this includes buying better items. Considering you can never be sure you have the best items ever and the game lets you experience non-linear satisfaction, it stays desirable (Skinner box experiment proved it). It may even be enough to just have an item, as is enriches their "ingame-wealth", which may be desirable for some by itself.

And if you still question how this virtual world resembles to our "real world", think about it, cause this is actually part of our current economy, considering our (the societies) ideology of money and wealth in numbers already surpassed the actual values of whatever you might consider that matters, be it to provide basic needs, or happiness, or whatever. Not everyone may agree with me, some claim that the bigger financial and bank institutes still monitor the currency and transition from resources to money, but i think, that the biggest part of our economy consists of actually trading with virtual goods, shoving numbers around, which in reality represent nothing, neither anything that matters, nor of matter.

The only real effect of this is an increasing social inequality, what isn't only effecting statistical numbers, but real peoples lifes.

And here we came from D3 Items to economy in a nutshell.

My point still holds - the "items" (randomly generated numbers) are given in Diablo 3 and are only useful there. Same goes for in-game currency. You can get the exact same items without spending any money if you just trade your unwanted powerful items (or extra in-game currency) for wanted powerful items with other people. This way you can immerse yourself within the virtual world instead of basically paying someone with real world money for farming items.

I appreciate the detailed explanation regardless.

 

[Aprilgold]

This is one of those things were you go "Hmmm that's pretty interesting" but at the same time are like "Nope, don't want any part in it".

I believe it when he says he's not exploiting or doing anything wrong. But I'm still, deep down, feeling like something foul is underfoot.

EDIT: Not by him I mean. He's playing things fairly. I just can't shake the feeling we'll see a negative side to this not too far off into the future.

Yeah this. I can't wait for the headline "Man tortures another man for his Blizzard Account to make thousands off of his rare items. Also games lead to violence trolololololololol."

Ok that isn't what you meant, but I just can't wait to see if Blizzard was actually pulling strings somehow and gave him that money as a way of getting the greatest free marketing that comes with the promise of money to those who buy the product.

 

[unstabLized]

This is very interesting indeed. He sounds pretty smart too so I wouldn't be surprised if this is true.

I've been thinking of getting Diablo III lately, but not really because of the auction house. Is the game good or worth it? (besides the DRM of course lol)

To be honest? Not that much. Depends on what you're looking for. If you're looking to play for a very long time, you might get disappointed. I made one character, played about 50-60 hours with it, and I haven't been on since. I don't know, I just got turned off by it. Maybe because you have to keep going through difficulties to level your character properly. First on Normal,then Nightmare, then Hell, and if you're good, Inferno. It just gets boring after a while. Plus, if you're not planning on flipping through Auction House, in which case you might have to at some points, or else your game will advance slower, then you have to farm over and over and over again to get a decent item to get past a checkpoint. Overall, the game isn't worth $60. $40 tops. It was good while it lasted, but now, no one I know plays it anymore, and they hate it. Lol. I liked the original release. I picked it up 3 days after launch, because I just knew servers would overload. It's what they did after with patches that completely got rid of my fun.

OT: Good for him. If he's having fun doing it, why not?

 

[Strazdas]

He sounds smart and it was only a matter of time till somone did this. I can see him living off it.

 

[Soods]

site has two important functions which are, "Buy Online", "Sell to Us".

Buying online is the default function of our website; it includes buying gold, items, poewrlevelling, and accounts. When you buy gold or items, we will set a place to meet with you in-game after the payment has been received. We always make a face to face trade. Sometimes, if the game has an e-mail function, we can e-mail your purchase to you as a secondary option. Please note that the gold and items will not go to your account automatically; you need to contact us. When buying powerlevelling, you will have to tell us your ID and your password. Tell us this information when you place your order so that we can access your account. You can also contact us with the information after your payment has been sent instead. Buying accounts is complicated because most of the accounts belong to other players. We work just as one agent. The account owner leaves a message on our website, we put it on the buying list, and we pay the owner after it has been sold. So the account cannot always be delivered in time. It is recommended that you contact us before you send the payment to check whether the owner of the account is online, or the account is in our hands.


http://www.diablo3walmart.com/

Bot much?
OT: Man, I really should've stuck longer with D3. I could really use some money.

 

[Evil Smurf]

Got to hand it to him, he's one smart cookie.

The one nerd to rule them all he is!

 

[yunnnn]

Here's a blog from some other guy who claims he's made thousands of dollars and even documents his businesses. He also writes it with a Cracked.com style:
http://diabloshit.blogspot.com/

Crack.com style? I hate you.

 

[Soak]

*snip*
My point still holds - the "items" (randomly generated numbers) are given in Diablo 3 and are only useful there. Same goes for in-game currency. You can get the exact same items without spending any money if you just trade your unwanted powerful items (or extra in-game currency) for wanted powerful items with other people. This way you can immerse yourself within the virtual world instead of basically paying someone with real world money for farming items.

I appreciate the detailed explanation regardless.

I won't deny your point, you are able to achieve the same by yourself, without spending money and i wouldn't spend any money on that either.
Though, here's another point: You are able to spend time to learn how to tailor, cut out the middleman presented by a cloth-store, buy some fabrics and tailor yourself - done that myself, found it to be very interresting and fun, it saves me money and my clothes are more unique than an item in Diablo could ever be - you could even go further and produce your own fabrics, or trade those clothes with others if they like yours and you like theirs, for diversity or whatever, but given the opportunity and to save time or for whatever reasons, most people don't and buy their clothes in stores, sometimes for ridiculously and unjustified high prices. In pretty much the same way people choose to take a shortcut and spend some money on their favorite game to buy an item they want.
By the way, hail to the economy

 

[Doom972]

*snip*
My point still holds - the "items" (randomly generated numbers) are given in Diablo 3 and are only useful there. Same goes for in-game currency. You can get the exact same items without spending any money if you just trade your unwanted powerful items (or extra in-game currency) for wanted powerful items with other people. This way you can immerse yourself within the virtual world instead of basically paying someone with real world money for farming items.

I appreciate the detailed explanation regardless.

I won't deny your point, you are able to achieve the same by yourself, without spending money and i wouldn't spend any money on that either.
Though, here's another point: You are able to spend time to learn how to tailor, cut out the middleman presented by a cloth-store, buy some fabrics and tailor yourself - done that myself, found it to be very interresting and fun, it saves me money and my clothes are more unique than an item in Diablo could ever be - you could even go further and produce your own fabrics, or trade those clothes with others if they like yours and you like theirs, for diversity or whatever, but given the opportunity and to save time or for whatever reasons, most people don't and buy their clothes in stores, sometimes for ridiculously and unjustified high prices. In pretty much the same way people choose to take a shortcut and spend some money on their favorite game to buy an item they want.
By the way, hail to the economy

That's correct, but to perform those tasks, one must first acquire a certain level of proficiency and have an interest in doing them - most people lack either or both, so they pay someone else for the products that you mentioned. This is a game - something to do in your free time, of your own free will, for the sake of entertaining yourself. You gain the required proficiency very quickly, and you must have interest in playing or you wouldn't have bought the game in the first place. Even if you lost interest in playing the game over and over to get new items, how will new items make it more interesting?

Oh, and hail to the economy.

 

[Beautiful End]

Mother of god...

Vork has moved on from the Game to Diablo III! Knights of Good, save us!

Spoiler: Kudos if you get the reference...

No, but seriously. Good for this guy, if it's true. I agree with the ideology of making money LEGALLY whenever possible. This guy saw an opening and took it. And his patience and determination. Damn.
I would never be able to do that. I just don't have the time or the interest to do it. Even if the reward is plain cash.