Blizzard Reveals Diablo 3 (Real Money) Auction House 384
trawg writes "At a special event at Blizzard HQ in California, gaming press were treated to the first look at the Diablo 3 auction house — featuring real-world money transactions across different regions allowing you to buy and sell items with real money. There'll be a listing fee and a sales fee for auctions, and while they're not talking dollar numbers just yet, Blizzard assures gamers that they're not looking to pinch pennies."
Update: 08/01 17:41 GMT by S :The other big piece of news about Diablo 3 is that it will require a persistent connection to Battle.net to play, even for single-player mode. Eurogamer has a detailed write-up about the current state of the beta.
no offline play = no sale (Score:2, Interesting)
tsia
Re:Nope, not going to play Diablo 3. (Score:5, Interesting)
Fuck everything about this...
I kind of have to agree...
I was a hardcore D2 gamer, almost failed out of college because of that game, and I've been looking forward to D3 Very Much.
But real money? No. I play games as an escape from thinking about things like my bank account.
Bliz, please rethink this.
Let a real money secondary economy evolve, but for the love of Pete don't enshrine it in the game.
Re:Cue... (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, it will eliminate a lot of that spam, since if you're looking for something, you have a singular, searchable place to go find it. Unfortunately, it will be replaced by "Yo yo, check out my auction for 4 2 soc 2 skill 20 fcr barb circlet". On the plus side, thousands of Chinese teenagers are about to get new jobs.
Re:Nope, not going to play Diablo 3. (Score:5, Interesting)
Realistically lack of LAN play in today's market will only upset geeks, and only a very small subset of them. Battle.NET DRM is indeed annoying in it's own way, but it's also kind of cool - namely in that Blizzard will let you redownload all your games at will. I managed to find my Warcraft III jewel case in a drawer - no clue where the CD is, but it had the CD-key on the case. I logged into my Battle.NET account, registered that game, and poof. Instantly download ability. That's a benefit that I can live with a few negatives to get.
Re:no offline play = no sale (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Conflict of interest (Score:4, Interesting)
If this new trading system isn't executed well, people won't use it.
Blizzard will likely make a good real-money trading system. That's not the issue.
The issue is Blizzard will then have an incentive to design the economy around stimulating real-money trading. So the system of drop frequency and the frequency of adding new items to the game could easily be designed to encourage maximum trading. Even if this is not the plan at the start, it will be a factor in every decision they make with game items or the economy, either overtly or in the back of their minds. It could not be otherwise, because as you said, "The whole point of being in business selling games is to make a profit".
The risk is the economy starts looking more like that of a free-to-play game because the developer has the same motives as a free-to-play developer if they are skimming money from transactions. The next step is the developer selling the rare items for a lot of real-world money to increase profits even more, even though this totally ruins an economy based on scarcity. Then the question is, how much will players tolerate? From Blizzard, I think they will tolerate quite a lot.
I have no interest in playing Diablo III myself--I just hate to see video games increasingly turning from something developed to bring challenge and fun to the player and sold at a one-time cost into something explicitly designed at every step to encourage players to pay for satisfaction within a game that can be turned off permanently at any time the developer chooses.
I'd probably count you in the minorty (Score:4, Interesting)
I bought Diablo II and played it in single player and on a LAN exclusively.
My friends and I did the same, at least initially, but once I got onto Battle.net, I played online exclusively. The rest of them did the same once they got internet access at home.
One of them did something I thought very odd, though. He played on Battle.net, but only ever by himself. He didn't trade items, either. I couldn't fathom why anyone would do that, considering the palpable negative effects the added latency and the occasional full-on desync had on the game itself.
[nostalgia]
To this day, I really, really miss hacking that game. I hereby give a shout out to anyone who recognizes these names or hacks: Herzog Zwei, Thohell, Very_Superior (though a jerk he mostly was), BootyJu1ce, EvilCheese (very, very brilliant hacker), Oxide (who I was told was a twerp), the Chest Hack (0x44, how we hardly knew ye), "The Matrix" (and anyone who liked the Ith War Pike I made on USEast), and (quite possibly the funniest exploit ever) Imbue Scanning.
[/nostalgia]
That game made me loathe dialup internet.