Soo... Diablo 3 Anyone?

/eyeroll... lol watch the video about it, it's really not like that. The way they explain it makes sense.

Penny-Arcade's take on the subject, which i thought was worth sharing:

Wow.. I was interested in getting into Diablo 3.. I think I'll avoid it now.. I HATE games that are based on RMT.. Sure, you can play the game without spending a dime to buy in-game items, but you still get shafted.. I've played several games that use this method, it starts out mostly just for the lazy people, you can earn and obtain the same items, but you have the option to just buy it with cash rather than work for it.. It evolves eventually to where for the good stuff you HAVE To use real money to obtain them..

Gunbound is the perfect example of that.. At first, everything was bought with gold you earned from matches, then they added the option to buy stuff with real money, but those same items could still be bought with gold if you preferred to work for the items instead, then it further evolved to where the good stuff was cash only, and the items make a huge impact on game play, they give huge bonuses and it becomes nearly impossible to compete with cash users.

Rakion did the same thing as well.. At first all the items could be bought or earned, then they added new stuff that gave you a huge advantage that was cash only. Again, you stood little chance against a cash user.

In both games you'd have to be extremely skilled and the cash user would need to suck to be able to beat them.

Jumping to conclusions and assuming there won't be any balance ftw. :3

How would you balance something like this? Unless they add some cap to the amount of things you can buy/sell, (they probably won't), anyone can just buy their way to the top on their first day.

Day 1 pirate.

I just hope online play doesn't come down to countless Baal runs like #2 had in the past.
Either that or lame e-peen duals and money theft.
It was actually fun going through campaign with a friend.

baal runs are fun...get a sorc to teleport to baal, and a hammerdin to kill everything :D

Big difference here is (supposedly) Blizzard won't be pumping any items into the game themselves for this RMT AH. It's purely player-found items, just instead of trading for items and backdoor money deals, they now have a direct avenue in game to sell things for money.

And Blizzard sits back and instead of having to fight RMT, they profit from it. To the person that worried about "new super items" being put in that can be bought breaking the game, the system they are proposing benefits them more if there are a lot of possible "bests" so that more drops are put up/sell.

I wondered how they'd deal with the costs of running a "free to play" game like the past diablo games with the way the gaming scene is nowadays. And honestly, I think this answer is brilliant. I'm interested in seeing how it turns out, and a bit skeptical as I assume everyone is. But to me this is a better option than the F2P but here's stuff you can buy method most of them out there seem to use.

That people who are ready to shell out cash for items will be ahead of those who aren't.. Like I said, I've witnessed many games start off like this, everyone can obtain the same items, those who are ready to spend cash get said items much faster... Then later on, they add in stuff that you have to spend money to get, and you have no way around it.. That's not to say it's definitely going happen that way, but from my experience it usually does.. I wouldn't be one bit surprised if a year after release there are super powered items that you absolutely have to shell out cash to get..

isn't that game "perfect world international" or something like that has a ingame store with like a +5000% bonus to exp scrolls you can buy for like $2.00? and flying mounts

It seems most everyone in this thread is confusing DLC with an in-game auction house that utilizes real world currency.

Blizzard isn't selling you anything. They're facilitating trades between players in a player-driven economy. Just imagine Jeuno AH and then imagine a special, different AH in Whitegate where prices are "crysta" instead of gil. You're not paying the crysta to SE (though they will surely take a small fee) and SE is not providing you with an item.

Despite their sincerest efforts, SE has been unable to abolish RMT. It happens, all day, every day. You cannot remove users who one way or another exchange virtual goods with money. They are in every MMO whether it's officially condoned or not. I can certainly see balance problems in flat out providing the item directly from the company. They can make as many as they want, and charge whatever they want. But keeping it with the players, the amount of items are fixed to whatever gets dropped on a given day, and the prices will be competitive just as they would with the in-game currency.

So again, what's the problem?

I don't, I care when I'm pretty much forced to use cold hard cash to progress in a game..

I'm not sure what games you're referencing, but if they're F2P games then their sole revenue is DLC/RMT activity since they don't charge a monthly fee. This is just the business model. Of course they're going to add incentives and extremely powerful items/services that are only available for cash. They have to, it's where their income comes from. Diablo 3, on the other hand, seems to be radically different than this.

I never said it isn't a business model.. I said I dislike (you know, as in my opinion, that I'm sharing, because that's what forums are for) it and would rather avoid games like that.

It's also pretty annoying when someone acts like they're epicly uber and the greatest player on Earth because they wasted a bunch of their money on buying in-game items, but one of my pet peeves is arrogance.. It's just worse when they don't even have anything to rightfully be arrogant about.

Well, if you pay $15 per month for a subscription, or buy approximately $15 per month worth of items, is there really a difference between these two? If you don't want to pay at all, I can respect that too, but of course your options will be rather limited... this should be obvious.

I can recognize an opinion when I see one, I'm merely pointing out that Blizzard taking a cut on microtransactions between players is an entirely different business model than selling ingame products/DLC ala F2P.

Multiplayer games may not be for you. There will always be someone that acts like they're the greatest even though they were carried through something, or just plain given stuff. Arrogance is everywhere, sorry to say.

While I'm not one of those that buy items even in the F2P games that are based on it, I do understand them. Time is money is a phrase everyone has or should have heard before. Some people have more money than time, so if they can lessen the time investment by spending money, it makes sense to them.

Given that this is not the company pumping in items, but literally just the same trade system that would have been in place in game anyway, just with a real world money counterpart (ie: it's players on either side of the deal, supply and demand), I don't have a problem with it at this moment. I think it's a smart way to go about how the gaming landscape seems to be these days, and this lets them avoid being forced to add in high value eShop items to keep the game profitable. Players can have fun in the game, make a little extra cash, AND keep a hopefully good game rolling along all at the same time.

Exactly, so there's no reason why online games wouldn't be for me.. It's not like if I don't play online games that I avoid arrogance..

Does anyone have any idea what it will take to run D3?

Edit - Nevermind, I just checked the website and it didn't say.

I don't know yet. This is a pretty different model than how I expected a game to allow RMT.

I never expected real money trades sanctioned from person to person, rather I expected the first design to be direct sales from developer to player.

I'm insanely curious to see how it works out. Rest assured the industry will be watching with intense interest.

unless they are the ones stocking the shelves of the real world money auction house, I dont see how this dont seem like and obvious way to exploit players bank accounts worse than before plus promote people not getting what they neeed and moving on instead they will camp anything to generate RMT. I agree it can suck to have to timesink for good stuff like emps and mission completion items but just people the time in guys.

Oh no doubt.

Expect a MMO to adapt this model in the future if this works out for them.

Even if they don't just generate items to sell, they will be making money off of every transaction.

This is a genius idea.

I remember them saying quite awhile back the system specs are going to be kept low, they have no desire to force people to have above average computers just to play..

To be honest I've been using Blizzard products for about 3 years now and they seem to be very good at making their games available for both high and low end uses. Starcraft run on high is a BEAUTIFUL game, but on it's lowest settings it can be run by virtually any computer from the last decade.


15 days, 3 hours, 51 minutes... Ahhh >_<!

D3 Countdown

I've never anticipated any game as much as this. It sucks that my classes start 2 days after the release, as I forsee myself never leaving my room for a week =P

Yes!!! Yes!!! Yes!!

Wish I could find a store that had Collectors editions for presale still in stock ><