Diablo 3 will let players buy and sell items for real money

no doubt some groups of hardcores will progress as fast as possible in order to farm the high end gear and push it out the doors for as much money as they can get. As more and more people catch up with the curve price will stabilise and undercutting will bring the prices down significantly.

We used to do sell runs in WoW for gold. Could nuke an instance in no time at all and make an absolute killing in gold terms.
 
If trading items can be done in game without paying cash how can Blizzard possibly stop it by simply offering to do it too?

All they will do is offer a secure system that sets the prices and once other websites get established to the extent they can offer secure transactions but with better prices then the people who are actually prepared to pay for this sort of thing will go to the cheaper source. Obviously it will depend how much cheaper its going to be but I can see these prices ranging from less than £1 to £50 or more.
 
Probably because 9/10 people would prefer to buy on official channel that does not mean their account gets permabanned even if it costs them a few quid more.

The fact it will be 'legal' means there SHOULD in theory be a much larger market in the hope that Average Joe decides he might want to sell one of his drops, can do so - legally, easily and without any risk.

I wont lie, I've bought ingame currency with real money. Why spend 50 hours ingame getting something I can pay for with but 2 hours worth of my paid time at work? Horses for courses and some people will NEVER buy stuff ingame, but it's all about perceived value and RISK. Making it official removes the risk element.

Digital economies are HUGE profit makers for those who capitalise on them. I think it's pretty awesome Blizzard are up for giving it an official integrated shot. If it is TERRIBLE they can remove it. I imagine they are still going to police bot farmers pretty heavily, if not more so.
 
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People would buy gear on dodgy sites anyway. This gives them a chance to buy AND sell in a secure and trusted place. There is a gold AH too where people can trade for ingame currency and of course you can meet up and trade direct. More options is good.

Also just because it's there, doesn't mean you have to use it. Personally i'll be farming my own gear. Maybe using the AH for a specific rune/gem I want.

I will of course be selling, for both gold and money.
 
tibbsey said:
Oh my, constant connection and now this?
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Has the constant internet connection thing been officially confirmed?

[Edit]
Meh, just saw it in the FAQ on DiabloFans.

Sitting on 512Kbps internet here shared between 4 heavy users. Wonder what happens when the BB gets slow or goes down.
 
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Craig321 said:
Has the constant internet connection thing been officially confirmed?

[Edit]
Meh, just saw it in the FAQ on DiabloFans.

Sitting on 512Kbps internet here shared between 4 heavy users. Wonder what happens when the BB gets slow or goes down.
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Ideally if you are playing Solo then the connection is for auth and server updates, the entire world, I should imagine, runs locally.
 
Evilsod said:
Obviously it will depend how much cheaper its going to be but I can see these prices ranging from less than £1 to £50 or more.
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Screenshots I've looked at seem to have prices from a few cents up to $7. I'd expect the extremely rare stuff to go for more though. Once the games been going a while and the AH settles down anything even remotely common will go for pennies.

If people want to buy the rare items at extortionate prices, they're going to do it in or out the game. May as well let them.

Craig321 said:
Has the constant internet connection thing been officially confirmed?

[Edit]
Meh, just saw it in the FAQ on DiabloFans.

Sitting on 512Kbps internet here shared between 4 heavy users. Wonder what happens when the BB gets slow or goes down.
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Solo, it's an authentication thing in the background. You're not permanently playing on a dedicated server, sending every move back and forth, just your own item and character information.

Strife212 said:
In Diabo II gold means absolutely nothing and everyone is gold capped at 999999999 gold. I wonder how they are going to make it more useful now.
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You can do more with items than just vendor/AH them for gold, there's the whole artisans thing with breaking them down and turning them into more useful things as well now. :)
 
orderoftheflame said:
Screenshots I've looked at seem to have prices from a few cents up to $7. I'd expect the extremely rare stuff to go for more though. Once the games been going a while and the AH settles down anything even remotely common will go for pennies.

If people want to buy the rare items at extortionate prices, they're going to do it in or out the game. May as well let them.
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Well yes which means they have to offer absolutely every unique and set item for sale. Obviously we don't know enough about it yet but if you take D2 as a baseline they would have to prize up every rune, unique and set item which is a monumental task and even then there would still be an 'illegal' market for things like extremely good quality max socketed items and very powerful rares.
And given that things in D2 could range from the insanely powerful to completely useless in every tier and type then, unless they somehow eliminated super-powerful uniques, they would most likely have to charg more for them.

Tbh I really don't understand what Blizzards motives are here. Are they trying to protect customers by controlling the sale of items and the pricing or are they simply trying to get a piece of the pie by banning all other competition?
 
Blizzard aren't setting prices. It's completely done by the players like the wow auction houses. After the game is out for a few months prices will settle, and the relative cost of items will be calculated through natural economics. People won't buy XYZ item if ZYX item is cheaper and better, bring XYZ's price down, etc. Blizzard won't have any affect on prices.

Being able to buy items is something lots of players wanted clearly by how many of these 3rd party sites there still are. Blizzard are giving the functionality to players in a safe, secure manner. The only people loosing out from this are the farmers that would have stuck their own sites up.

They're taking a share sure, why wouldn't they? They're also giving players the chance to earn money to. If I find a decent Rare weapon at endgame and can make a fiver for no effort, I'm not going to cry over it. :p Buying item's with cash won't be for me though, I'll stick to the gold AH if I need anything.

I'd read the FAQ on the AH here. It gives a lot of reason to their motives and how it's going to work. :)

http://www.diablofans.com/topic/26249-diablo-3-press-event-visit/
 
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orderoftheflame said:
Blizzard aren't setting prices.
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I don't think people read linked articles these days before posting comments.

Let's make this easier for them:

This is not the same as the microtransaction model we’ve seen in other games: Blizzard themselves aren’t selling any in-game items. The auction house will be entirely player driven: everything you see there was found by someone, and most of the money spent to buy it goes to the player who found or crafted it.
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The system is like eBay. Blizz will take a fee on each transaction, probably a percentage of the final sale price.
 
Deific said:
What's going to happen is all the best items are going to be sold for real money. Then when it comes to PvP teams, the team thats splashed out the most real money on the best items is going to win.



Yay -_-
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Thats completely ridiculous if true :X
 
orderoftheflame said:
PvPs going to be ranked like SC2 I hear, so you'll spend all your time playing against players that will do similarly well, regardless of their gear.

I doubt most normal people will see the "hardcore" competitive teams in a game.
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Still a bit lame for PvP. Gear should not decide it short of your own decisions on what to equip but yet again its looking like a game that will, even if its not your immediate level, its still apparent.
 
Evilsod said:
Still a bit lame for PvP. Gear should not decide it short of your own decisions on what to equip but yet again its looking like a game that will, even if its not your immediate level, its still apparent.
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I think there'll be a lot more than just having top gear to doing well in PvP. :)

Hoping it'll be a bit like wow, if someone just buys their way into good gear and doesn't learn their character it's not going to help them.
 
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