Diablo 3: Auction house to accept real cash

[BD2003]

Ugh. This is so ugly. It's going to pervert the game on a very basic level. Gameplay mechanics should be based on what makes a game worthwhile to play in and of itself, not for outside rewards.

On a basic level, since activision will make a cut of each sale, gameplay decisions will be made to maximize those sales. It's crossing a line into those zynga games that are less of a game and more an addiction factory for microtransactions.

It was easy enough to get addicted to diablo 2 just based on it's gameplay. Now if you can make money off of it for yourself and activision, it's almost like you're a pseudo employee.

They might as well go all the way and make it into a multi-level marketing scam while they're at it.

Disgusting.

 

[shortylickens]

Is there gonna be an X-rated mod for the sorceress?

 

[KaOTiK]

I think something some of you are forgetting that think that the gold sellers wont be able to profit from this are forgetting is these chinese gold sellers do anything but play the game legit to get the gold/items to sell.

They will hack accounts, use bot programs, cheats, etc. They will be able to afford to sell stuff at dirt cheap prices cause of the ways above. As soon as bots and cheat programs are developed they will have no worries.

 

[KaOTiK]

Is there gonna be an X-rated mod for the sorceress?

no mods are allowed in D3

 

[Beev]

If anything, gold farmers will drive prices down and nothing more. The digital goods cost nothing to farm, so selling items for even $1 is a profit. Items won't cost hundreds of dollars. Most of them, if not all will probably be $5 or less, and if gold farmers cause an item to start selling for $2.99 then everyone else will just sell theirs at $2.95. They aren't going to give a crap.

 

[Josh123]

Bad idea all around. If you think games are full of gold sellers now just wait until it is accepted practice from the developer. Now instead of having the sellers that try to not get noticed you will have sellers that start whole companies to do nothing but sell and make it public, with companies fighting over who gets the most sales. I don't know about anyone else but I don't want to play a game where 1 out of 2 players is only playing to make money. It is removing the focus from the game where the players are there to have fun into a revenue stream and that will only hurt the normal players. There are better ways to deal with those playing for profit only and this isn't about that , but a way for the developer to cash in on it . Gold sellers may have been part of gaming but it wasn't something all players had to participate in, making it part of the game changes that.

Spam spam spam.

 

[Ross Ridge]

What do people make of this? The bolded sections of the answer doesn't make sense to me...

When someone buys an item you've put up for auction for cash, your presented with to options as to what to do with the money you've just earned. You can either put it in your Battle.net account or your third-party party payment service account. Lets call the later account "PayPal" for short.

If you choose the Battle.net option you can use the money in that account to buy stuff from Blizzard. Stuff like Diablo III action items you want to buy, or your subscription fees in World of Warcraft, or a Starcraft II baseball cap. You can't use the money in that account for anything other than Blizzard stuff, so you can't use to buy stuff on Ebay or get actual cash in your wallet. In particular you can't transfer the money to your "PayPal" account. It's too late, you should've choosen the other option when you auctioned off that item.

If you choose the "PayPal" account option you can use money where ever "PayPal" payments are accepted. Maybe even to buy Blizzard stuff. There will probably be higher fees with the "PayPal" option, so you'd be better of putting the money in your Battle.net account if all you want do with it is buy Blizzard stuff. With the "PayPal" option you should be able to get actual cash to put in your wallet, though that will probably mean even more fees.

 

[BD2003]

I think something some of you are forgetting that think that the gold sellers wont be able to profit from this are forgetting is these chinese gold sellers do anything but play the game legit to get the gold/items to sell.

They will hack accounts, use bot programs, cheats, etc. They will be able to afford to sell stuff at dirt cheap prices cause of the ways above. As soon as bots and cheat programs are developed they will have no worries.

Just the simple fact that the items are worth money are going to drive even the best items to near nothing. That's why activisions cut is going to be fixed, not a percentage.

As people quit the game they'll put whole inventories on firesale. Everything will be 99c before long.

Then knowing you can outfit your character with the best gear for a few bucks completely destroys all the fun of legitimately building a character, discovering items. A rare piece of gear would previously have had an intrinsic value that couldn't be measured in dollars and cents. That's all gone now. You're not swinging the sword of a thousand truths, you're swinging a dollar bill.

It's such a ridiculous conflict of interest that has already completely squashed my anticipation for the game.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

When someone buys an item you've put up for auction for cash, your presented with to options as to what to do with the money you've just earned. You can either put it in your Battle.net account or your third-party party payment service account. Lets call the later account "PayPal" for short.

If you choose the Battle.net option you can use the money in that account to buy stuff from Blizzard. Stuff like Diablo III action items you want to buy, or your subscription fees in World of Warcraft, or a Starcraft II baseball cap. You can't use the money in that account for anything other than Blizzard stuff, so you can't use to buy stuff on Ebay or get actual cash in your wallet. In particular you can't transfer the money to your "PayPal" account. It's too late, you should've choosen the other option when you auctioned off that item.

If you choose the "PayPal" account option you can use money where ever "PayPal" payments are accepted. Maybe even to buy Blizzard stuff. There will probably be higher fees with the "PayPal" option, so you'd be better of putting the money in your Battle.net account if all you want do with it is buy Blizzard stuff. With the "PayPal" option you should be able to get actual cash to put in your wallet, though that will probably mean even more fees.

I really hope they dont go through Paypal and find a way to directly transfer money to people's bank accounts.

 

[69Mach1]

D3 is online only too, if anybody didn't catch that. I'm pretty sure I won't be playing this game now... bummer.

Yeah I read that this morning. Pretty much ended my plans for playing this game. If I wanted online only, I'd be playing one of the mmo's somewhere. At least this will save me money.

 

[Ross Ridge]

TBH i cant see them doing this after the shitstorm SC2 caused with the same news. Im sure it will ship with some sort of offline mode like SC2 has

No, it's strictly going to be online only. Not just online authentication like Starcraft 2. Rob Pardo says you should go play some other game when you don't have Internet access, or your connection is flakey, or their servers are down, or whatever.

I don't really care about this auction house stuff, but the online-only bit has made me a lot less interested in Diablo III.

 

[Lotheron]

No, it's strictly going to be online only. Not just online authentication like Starcraft 2. Rob Pardo says you should go play some other game when you don't have Internet access, or your connection is flakey, or their servers are down, or whatever.

I don't really care about this auction house stuff, but the online-only bit has made me a lot less interested in Diablo III.

From the forum you linked:

 

[Beev]

The online part doesn't bother me. As we get closer and closer to a fully networked globe everything will always be online anyway. It sounds like most of the people that care about this part purely care that they don't have the choice to play offline, not that would do that.

The online part doesn't bother me at all.

Edit: My caption for the above picture:

"I don't always play offline, but when I do

it's because my internet is down, and I bust out the old SNES and have a blast anyway because I'm not a goddamn nitpicking downer."

 

[Lotheron]

The online part doesn't bother me. As we get closer and closer to a fully networked globe everything will always be online anyway. It sounds like most of the people that care about this part purely care that they don't have the choice to play offline, not that would do that.

The online part doesn't bother me at all.

Edit: My caption for the above picture:

"I don't always play offline, but when I do

it's because my internet is down, and I bust out the old SNES and have a blast anyway because I'm not a goddamn nitpicking downer."

While I'm not up in arms too much about the online only thing either, your caption is a load of BS.

Why would you accept not being able to play a single player game only because you couldn't connect to the internet?

In the end of the day, the only people that suffer are paying customers. The pirates will most definitely be able to play offline, whenever they wish.

 

[Dwarf]

Regarding the news, I am personally okay with online only and the lack of support for player mods. I am not 100% sure about the auction house for real money and its impact on the ingame economy.

Here is some interesting news regarding the auction house...

Hardcore characters (a special difficulty mode that features permadeath for characters) cannot used the currency-based auction house, only the in-game gold one. "We're protecting players from themselves -- we don't want a situation where someone spent a lot of money and then that character --along with the items -- gets deleted due to combat or PVP soon afterwards," notes Pardo.

http://www.1up.com/news/diablo-3-real-money-auction-house

Also, I question why Blizzard has to charge a real money fee for listing items.

Blizzard will charge a listing fee and a sale fee. The former you pay no matter what, while the latter only comes up if you make a sale. No specific figures have been given, but Pardo describes these fees as "nominal. He also believes that since there is a listing fee, this will help the auction house self-correct into only listing noteworthy items, as people would be discouraged to pay a listing fee to sell trash or vendor loot.

However, couldn't they come up with an algorithm to identify the total amount of in-game money a given server's economy (US West etc. / US East etc.) and adjust the listing fee based on that in-game currency dynamically based on a formula using 20% of (total in-game gold / total in-game accounts)? For example, let's say there is a total of 1,000,000,000,000 ingame gold and 500,000 accounts on US East. Couldn't you assume that on average, an account has 2,000,000 gold so require like 20% of that to be 400,000 per item listed.

I understand that in D2 gold was usefull only for buying pots and gambling, but maybe it can find another use here. That way it wouldn't seem like Blizzard is trying to nickel and dime us.

Personally, I will wait and see what happens as we get closer to release, possibly experiment in the beta.

 

[crownjules]

I'll just throw this in here since it's the most active and current D3 thread.

Diablo 3 to require "always on" internet connection

Remember when you first heard stuff like how either Steam or StarCraft 2 require you to be online for authentication purposes? That the process to play or utilize either service offline can be a bit circuitous, but at least it's still possible to be offline. But, Diablo 3 differs in that you must be online to play at all -- not just for authentication.

Executive vice president of game design Rob Pardo notes that the wealth of improvements and features Diablo 3 brings to Battle.net necessitate the always-online requirement. Specific additions that he refers to include:

A persistent friends list.
Cross-game chat via the RealID system.
Persistent characters that are stored server-side (no more having to play online once every 90 days, nor item duplication cheats).
Persistent party system.
Player-versus-player and public game matchmaking.
Dynamic drop-in/out for co-op
Larger item stash that gets shared among all of your characters (at the moment, up to 10)
The auction house.
The Achievement system and detailed stat-tracking, both of which feed into the final point:
The Banner system, a visual way to display your prowess in the game. Banners start out like emblems, where you can choose from an array of symbols, patterns, and overall shape/design. Then, you can tweak its appearance through Achievements and other accomplishments. Examples Pardo cites include whether the character is in Hardcore mode, how many Achievements have been earned, how many PVP victories, and so forth. Additionally, the Banners also have gameplay features; in-game, rather than use Town Portal, you can click on a player's Banner to instantly teleport over to said player.
While Pardo recognizes that people sometimes want or need to play offline (such as internet outages, or playing on a laptop during an airplane flight), he notes that the increased security, plus benefits like the above, outweigh those other concerns. "I want to play Diablo 3 on my laptop in a plane, but, well, there are other games to play for times like that."

Interestingly, before our own play session for preview purposes, we saw what happens when you try to play offline (or get knocked offline): you get stuck at the login screen (a la World of Warcraft). The reason? The beta server wasn't online. How do you feel about this? Are you already online all the time anyways (for Steam or WOW)? Or is this a significant issue? Hows does this compare to similar DRM strategy from Ubisoft? Let us know in the comments below.

Also, if you're curious about some of the new Battle.net features, click on through for some screens (fullsize images also available by clicking on the screen itself) below.

Boom.

 

[Wyndru]

My wife likes this decision by blizzard, as I will not be buying this game and will have more free time as a result.

Between this and it being online only, this will be the first of the series I don't buy on the release date.

 

[Anubis]

I'll just throw this in here since it's the most active and current D3 thread.

Diablo 3 to require "always on" internet connection



Boom.

all of that stuff is nice and all but the no offline mode annoys me. its not that i wint be buying the game and all that but there are times when the internet gows down. not being able to play a game during that time is just wrong IMO

 

[Zenoth]

Ok, I must say this regarding having to be always on-line to play...

I've played Diablo II for approximately seven years of my life, (probably closer to eight), and I must have played at least five of those years on-line, if not more. In other words, I started to play the game off-line, but when I went on-line I never looked back. While still possible to play the game off-line there was no point to do so for me anymore, it was all about on-line. What I'm saying is that Diablo II already became an "on-line only" experience, indirectly, not forced by Blizzard of course, but caused by my own preferences.

It reminds me of more recent games like... say... Bad Company 2 for instance. There's an off-line story mode, it's short, but it's scripted, there's a story, and yeah, it can be played off-line, but who actually did? I own that game myself, I've tried off-line and played the campaign for around three hours total, I never finished it (honestly I thought it was somewhat boring) and I moved on-line. There's plenty of examples like that I could give. There's many games out there where playing off-line is possible but is just not worth it anyway in the end, either because it's boring or simply because the developers created a minimalistic off-line mode to "convince" players to remain on-line.

Now, in Diablo 3's case Blizzard simply says (and does) out loud what other developers before them did or tried to do more silently (I.E "forcing" an almost on-line exclusive experience even if it doesn't seem to fit the very game itself). Being "forced" to have a constant connection to play the game on-line isn't worse or better than having to let Steam connect to update your Steam games, and it's not as bad or worse than having to connect to your EA/BioWare Network account via in-game log-ins to be granted access to your extra content owned in those accounts.

What I'm seeing is just "the past" (when mostly off-line games were made and on-line was merely an extra or was just starting to be more common in games) clashing with the new standards of the present (when being on-line at almost all times isn't considered exaggerated anymore and is now more perceived as something normal). So, even if I tried I really couldn't be "against" nor "for" that, really, it's just how things are going to work and how they've been working for gaming (and not just on the PC anymore) since a few years now. With time it's just going to be more common and also more accepted by gamers, but right now it's still tough to adapt for some and I do understand why. I started gaming on the NES myself, I've been through and am still going through the "realize that pure off-line gaming is starting to die" phase.

 

[Chiropteran]

I think something some of you are forgetting that think that the gold sellers wont be able to profit from this are forgetting is these chinese gold sellers do anything but play the game legit to get the gold/items to sell.

They will hack accounts, use bot programs, cheats, etc. They will be able to afford to sell stuff at dirt cheap prices cause of the ways above. As soon as bots and cheat programs are developed they will have no worries.

I think that what you are missing is that by legitimately endorsing sale of items for real money, blizzard is putting itself into a position where it CAN NOT allow those sort of hacks or cheats to exist for long before immediately closing accounts or patches. Having played the original diablo online, which had a completely worthless economy due to duping, this is a huge plus IMO. And don't say blizzard won't be able to find the bots or cheats, it's pretty trivial to follow the money trail.

edit: and this is why the "always online" is necessary. with offline play, a bug could bring limitless duped items into the economy, ruining it instantly.

 

[Beev]

While I'm not up in arms too much about the online only thing either, your caption is a load of BS.

Why would you accept not being able to play a single player game only because you couldn't connect to the internet?

In the end of the day, the only people that suffer are paying customers. The pirates will most definitely be able to play offline, whenever they wish.

Because if my internet goes down I have a whole slew of problems that I need to fix, and merely not being able to play a game doesn't change that. If Blizzard's servers go down and cause people to be unable to play then they'll compensate us, which Blizzard is good at. And with my internet's and Blizzard's track record of up time I'm really not worried.

 

[KaOTiK]

I think that what you are missing is that by legitimately endorsing sale of items for real money, blizzard is putting itself into a position where it CAN NOT allow those sort of hacks or cheats to exist for long before immediately closing accounts or patches. Having played the original diablo online, which had a completely worthless economy due to duping, this is a huge plus IMO. And don't say blizzard won't be able to find the bots or cheats, it's pretty trivial to follow the money trail.

edit: and this is why the "always online" is necessary. with offline play, a bug could bring limitless duped items into the economy, ruining it instantly.

You have more faith then I do in Blizzards ability to get rid of hacks and cheats.
In the end since Blizzard is going to get a cut from every auction by listing alone, I doubt they are going to bust their balls anymore then they have to detect cheaters. If anything, finding out about suchs hacks/bots/etc will be extremely difficult now that people wont want to share such info since real money is involved now.

But lets say that Blizz somehow manages to curb cheating/bots, they still need to deal with people getting their hacked accounts cause that is how these sellers get most their inventory now since it is much easier to trick someone into getting their account info then to even play.

Either way, if there is money to be made, the chinese gold sellers will be there in force, they always are.

 

[Chiropteran]

You have more faith then I do in Blizzards ability to get rid of hacks and cheats.


But lets say that Blizz somehow manages to curb cheating/bots, they still need to deal with people getting their hacked accounts cause that is how these sellers get most their inventory now since it is much easier to trick someone into getting their account info then to even play.

I expect cheats and hacks to exist, but I don't think they will last long without being fixed, and accounts banned. We'll see. Assume the payout is done via paypal, transactions can and will be reversed if blizzard can prove they were done illegitimately. In addition, blizzard could easily add a delay on fund withdraws, such that you have to wait 3 weeks after selling an item before the money shows up in your paypal account. That would really make it hard to abuse a cheat, you could abuse the hell out of it and make a ton of money quickly, but that would set off alarm bells and blizzard could stop the transaction before you get the money. On the other hand, you could try to play it slow and not make it obvious you have a cheat, but you still risk it being discovered perhaps by someone else who isn't being so careful and you might only get a few dollars and a banned account, barely worth it.


As far as people getting hacked, I feel that the character restore policy of WoW has really spoiled people and destroyed any incentive to use strong passwords or actually secure your account in any way. I'd love to see them take a hard line approach where if you choose not to use an authenticator you don't get any account restores. It's a dream, but maybe they will put an authenticator in the box when you buy the game and force people to use one.

 

[Spikesoldier]

Nice money-grab, Activision.

passsssss

 

[OCNewbie]

I'm honestly bothered less by the online-only play than the cash for items thing. This is a FANTASY game, where you play to get away from the real world; we already think about money waaaay too much... Now, instead of getting all excited when that awesome item you've been drooling over for so long finally drops (unless you've already bought it...) because of the power boost it would give your character, you will instead be excited because of the item's value in US American Dollars. How anti-fantasy, and anti game-like is that?

I couldn't be more disappointed with this news. I played Diablo 1 like a fiend for a good while, and the same way with Diablo 2 (until Everquest sucked me away). I've been looking forward to a true continuation of this awesome franchise. Apparently it died with Diablo 2.