Blizzard Reveals Diablo 3 (Real Money) Auction House

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.

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Oh, look

[0xdeadbeef]

Blizzard jumped a shark.

The new truism

[sapphire wyvern]

If you can't beat 'em, monetise 'em.

I guess in principle it's probably not _all_ that evil.

Still, it makes me think the gameplay experience will be like a Free To Play game... but with a $60 USD (or $90 AUD, grrrr) barrier to entry.

DRM

[c1t1z3nk41n3]

More news to come out is their decision to mirror Ubisoft with an always online requirement. Players will require a Battle.net connection even to play single player. I certainly won't be purchasing it, and it seems that most of my friends won't either. Too much DRM and no LAN play make it a poor investment.

Conflict of interest

[traindirector]

It just lets Blizzard get that percentage rather than an outside company. And why shouldn't they? These people are going to do it one way or another. Why not integrate it into the game?

The general argument is that then Blizzard has a conflict of interest: will future additions and changes to the game focus on increasing fun, or will they focus on increasing transaction profit?

It's easy for any person or organization to say "this is just something on the side and we will always focus on our core intent rather than generating extra profit". This is much harder to do in reality.

It's much easier to restrain oneself from entering a situation with a conflict of interest than getting involved and making questionable choices, perhaps without knowing you are making a tradeoff.

Re:DRM

[Baloroth]

Not sure if he can, but I can: here [wired.co.uk]. Took about 5 secs of Google. From the article:

To play Diablo 3, you'll need a constant internet connection -- it cannot be played offline.

Amusing part: they're trying to spin this as "good" for players: "no longer will you have to worry about leveling up to 30-40, then having to restart from scratch on Battle.net! Everyone who wants to level to 30-40 and never play on battle.net: you can just go fuck yourself." Thats a paraphrase, but you get the idea. BTW, that would be people like me. No interest in online play, would love LAN/ singleplayer. It's OK: I most likely won't have to worry about either the DRM or playing online. Either through not buying the game or... well, use your imagination.

Oh yeah, and rich players can buy more power through this auction house. Next step: items that Blizzard is selling that can only be bought on the auction house. They might not do that: depends if Activision (aka Bobby Kotick) is really letting Blizzard be free to do their thing or not. Blizzard would realize that would ruin the game. Activision just sees the $$$$$$$ they could make, and screw the gamers (more).

Oh yeah, and no modding either, according to that same article.

Amazingly bad...

[Beelzebud]

This just went from the game I was most looking forward to, to now it being on my Do Not Buy list....

Re:no offline play = no sale

[TheRaven64]

Mostly these days I play games on a laptop while travelling. If I'm on a train, Internet access is either nonexistent or expensive. If your game requires Internet access, it's either impossible or expensive to use in this environment, so I don't buy it.