Somebody please explain the point of paying money for great gear in a game where the objective is to find great gear.

Are you defeating the purpose of the game?

Originally posted by dave6660

Somebody please explain the point of paying money for great gear in a game where the objective is to find great gear.

Are you defeating the purpose of the game?

Their ridiculously low droprates are defeating the purpose of the game.

Originally posted by colddog04

Cheap leet gear cheapens the Diablo experience and makes looting meaningless.

 

Expensive leet gear gives a massive advantage to those willing to spend.

 

I personally don't like either of those situations at all.

This is  a product of your own mind and how you let others affect you.

Me, I play with a couple of friends on daily basis and I don't give a fuck for you guys, I'm just enjoying my own game.

If i can afford something from AH I buy else I play with what I have at level I can manage. It's so simple yet so many like to complicate and complane just cos they can.

"You" don't enjoy playing a hack and slash dungeon crawler? Wtf are you doing in D3 than... Just QQing on forums? I see...

Honestly, I don't see the point of having EVERYONE use the same market... The RMAH/Markets should be seperated by region, or even country.  Having it be all one big market saturates the market completely, destroying competition.

Originally posted by StarI

Originally posted by colddog04

Cheap leet gear cheapens the Diablo experience and makes looting meaningless.

 

Expensive leet gear gives a massive advantage to those willing to spend.

 

I personally don't like either of those situations at all.

 

This is  a product of your own mind and how you let others affect you.

 

Me, I play with a couple of friends on daily basis and I don't give a fuck for you guys, I'm just enjoying my own game.

 

If i can afford something from AH I buy else I play with what I have at level I can manage. It's so simple yet so many like to complicate and complane just cos they can.

"You" don't enjoy playing a hack and slash dungeon crawler? Wtf are you doing in D3 than... Just QQing on forums? I see...

I didn't buy the game. You can relax now.

Originally posted by colddog04

Cheap leet gear cheapens the Diablo experience and makes looting meaningless.

 

Expensive leet gear gives a massive advantage to those willing to spend.

 

I personally don't like either of those situations at all.

This is preety much it.

While it might not influence people that play solo it does influence the game as a whole and it will influence the design.

I found this game to be a repetetive bore, amazing to me people are spending even a 1.50 on items.  What a waste of 60 bucks.

I know it's been said but just wanted to repeat that the "gold farmers" didn't destroy the RMAH. The only reason why virtual items held their real money value in other games was the lack of competition that created an artificially low supply vs the relatively low demand. Now that everyone can sell items for real money the supply has skyrocketed while the demand has remained approximately the same.

I think adding an AH to Diablo was a bad move given the game's design. The entire point of the game, after you've completed it once, is to acquire better gear. It'd be as if WoW removed raid timers and made all drops BoE.

I had a friend who basically funding his whole college tuition (and a lot of drinking and other stuff) by owning a business of basically a bunch of 12 year olds that he'd pay 7-8 bucks an hour to farm on Diablo. 

I didn't even believe him until one day we got a knock on the door from the IRS/FBI saying they had a warrant for his computer.  Then he showed me a bank statement of them freezing about 40k in his checking account. 

The point of my story is that it's not hardest thing to do to convince a bunch of kids who like to play games to play games and you'll pay them if they give you their loot. TBH I'm not even sure he was using kids or some political prisoners in china (his father was Chinese government official), as this is something that is huge in China.  It's all about volume, and that's something China does not lack (1.3 billion people). 

Anyways, that was the first time I had ever imagined such a scheme to make money from playing a game, thought i'd share.

Originally posted by fundayz

Gold farmers didn't destroy Diablo 3, Blizzard did by taking something (i.e. RMT) that was present but looked down upon in Diablo 2 and making it present and encouraged in Diablo 3.

Blizzard has really been selling out recently, no?

^ This

We are witnessing the new Blizzard in all it's greed.

RIP Blizzard North

Originally posted by Souldrainer 
Dude.. you are way behind the information curve. Check out the 60 million gold/hr thread here. Blizzard is letting the farmers exploit the horrible security of the game, on purpose... but after the farmers make a good profit, they will ban them, forcing said farmers to buy even more copies of the game.... then Blizzard updates their security, creates a new "we hate exploiters" press release, and allows the farmers to use a new exploit for a while. Rinse/repeat X infinity. This is how Blizzard keeps getting insane box sales in Asia, and how the gold farming industry thrives. Gold farmer interviews confirm these techniques.

That's an attractive tin foil hat you're wearing.

I find it hilarious that you think exploits are not only intentionally left in, but are a crucial part of Blizzard's asia strategy.

Exploits will be plugged and goldsellers will disappear.  It won't happen overnight (although RMAH will be a huge initial blow,) but market forces will inexorably force them out.

I think this is a good thing, I prefer markets like this in games, especially in Diablo.

Why?

Diablo 2 was all about finding sick gear. Diablo 3 has (and still is in the EU, we ain't got the RMAH yet!) been more about grinding gold, in order to buy good gear on the AH. Even though I haven't been grinding much gold (because I hate it and it's boring for periods any longer than 30mins).

The fact that gold sells for cheap, means that items will become expensive (in terms of how much gold they cost). Basically, Diablo 3 is now about finding sick items to either use, or sell to buy ones more appropriate for your class. I prefer this, more like Diablo 2!

I play with a solid group of friends. We farm items, not gold. From the looks of the USD RMAH, we've already got a few items worth over £20! That's brilliant! I can sell them off and either gear up my Diablo character or cash out and buy a bag o' weed or a night out!

I've done this is pretty much every MMO I play, but now I can do it all without risking my account getting banned, or getting scammed (which has happened a handful of times actually, fucking annoying but can't be helped sometimes)!

Shame about the 15% they rob on cashout though... That's a bit much when combined with the transaction fees on top, greedy bastards.

Originally posted by xmenty

Gold farmer still can farm golds and buy out everything in AH then resell it again in RMAH.

Hackers will hack and sell off stuff in RMAH too.

There is always a loop hole in everything. 

Yes, they can still do that.  Alongside millions of actual players doing the same thing, adding insane amounts of competition to the market.  Which dramatically reduces their potential profit.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by BlueCameo

Originally posted by Teala

Why are you buying any items? Is there some competition in game I am not aware of? Is there some form of virtual property you must defend? Will not having item X mean you can't play and enjoy the game? I guess I am dumb founded. Also, it's not even an MMO. It is a single-player with co-op optional play. No persistent world where you interact with people or compete. So all these questions I asked stand. What's the point?

 

The point is, everyone's trying to sell and there's zero point to buy. :P

 

and if everyone is trying to sell and few will buy .. prices will crash and people will go back to play the game. In fact, this is a game very BAD for gold farmers because good items never leave the market and prices are going to crash and crash in the long run.

I think we are going to see a very cyclical machine here.  There are going to be those that refuse to ever use the RMAH but will use the gold AH.  What we are going to eventually see happen is people buying cheap items of the RMAH, selling them for gold on the gold AH and then selling gold on the RMAH.  Eventually more and more people will start selling items for gold on the regular AH and we will see an increase in the prices on the RMAH and a decrease on the gold AH and the process will reverse itself.  You'll then see more items on the RMAH selling for a bit more and people will flock to that again, then prices on the gold AH will increase and prices on the RMAH will decrease and the cycle will continue.  T

hey ensured this when they allowed not only the sale of items but of gold as well.  For those that learn to predict when one side will spike and the other decline, they will be the ones to make a bit of money (not much because of the fact that items never go away unless the individual destroys them or sells them to an npc).  Eventually I think we will see a point where only gold is usefull to sell because you can sell large amounts of it at a time for the minimum price and this is important as there is a flat fee of 1.00 for all transactions.  So if prices fall to 1.50 for a good item due to oversaturation, then you only make 50c.  If instead you sell it on the gold ah and then sell gold for money even if 100k gold sells for the minimum of 1.00 you can sell a million gold for 5$ and be better off than selling a piece of armor for 1.5$.

Is anyone really surprised by this? It was doomed from the very beginning.

But someone is actually VERY happy now... Blizzard, who gain a percentage of every single sale.

The real money AH of diablo is the typical Blizzard answer to a problem... it's not "how can we get rid of RMT so that our players aren't annoyed by them and our games have a balanced playfields", no no no! The real thinking is "how can we take advantage and make money of the RMT market". You can expect Titan to have a real money AH too.

You do know that there are many "over-seas" IPs that actually are regular players. To suggest that you ban us is pretty simpleminded and smallminded.

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

Is anyone really surprised by this? It was doomed from the very beginning.

But someone is actually VERY happy now... Blizzard, who gain a percentage of every single sale.

The real money AH of diablo is the typical Blizzard answer to a problem... it's not "how can we get rid of RMT so that our players aren't annoyed by them and our games have a balanced playfields", no no no! The real thinking is "how can we take advantage and make money of the RMT market". You can expect Titan to have a real money AH too.

It is no different than CCP cashing in on plex sales in EVE.

Rather than combat the gold sellers, both companies are getting in on the action.

I think it is a good business move, but as a gamer I hate it.

Originally posted by Moaky07

It is no different than CCP cashing in on plex sales in EVE.

It is, unless I missed something. In EvE, just like in the upcoming GW2, you can't sell in game stuff for real life money. Correct me if I'm wrong, of course. There's no (legal) way to make real money from the game.

In Diablo III, you can make real money from the game, and this totally legally and supported (aka encouraged) by Blizzard who makes a substancial percentage on each sale.

I must admit I only played EvE shortly and ages ago, so I may be wrong. Can you sell in game property in EvE directly for real life money?

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

Originally posted by Moaky07

It is no different than CCP cashing in on plex sales in EVE.

It is, unless I missed something. In EvE, just like in the upcoming GW2, you can't sell in game stuff for real life money. Correct me if I'm wrong, of course. There's no (legal) way to make real money from the game.

In Diablo III, you can make real money from the game, and this totally legally and supported (aka encouraged) by Blizzard who makes a substancial percentage on each sale.

I must admit I only played EvE shortly and ages ago, so I may be wrong. Can you sell in game property in EvE directly for real life money?

No.   But I am sure there are people that do.  

I still do not get it.    Why buy anything virtual with real money?   Someone please explain this to me so I can understand the need that some people have to do something like this?

Originally posted by Teala

No.   But I am sure there are people that do.  

Irrelevant to the actual discussion then. I'm sure there are people selling/buying drugs in "real life" too, it doesn't make it more legal or acceptable.

Point is, in Diablo III, this is 100% legal, and was made so because Blizzard is making money from it at the expense of the game's balance. It was predictable that the gold farmers would outdo the normal customer on this too, since it's their "job", so to say. The result of Diablo III's real money AH was predictable, and is the shining example of why NOT to do such things in games.