Auction House Online: The Game (Diablo 3) is a MASSIVE decline

[DraQ]

I'm not even going to respond to the strawman shit

Of course you won't respond to strawman shit, because the only strawman shit here is your mischaracterization of my points as strawman shit.

However games are not about flexibility, they are about restrictions.

I don't think I've ever witnessed this much fuelled by sheer idiocy before.

So would you like to play FF VII instead?

GTFO.

 

[shihonage]

I for one took pleasure in making odd, flawed Diablo2 builds. And WoW builds - until they took that away.

 

[Black]

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YOU PRE-ORDERED YOUR GW2 YET, FAG?!

 

[Whisper]

Every priest is going to have the exact same spells, every mage is going to have the exact same spells, and guess what: you pick and choose from a certain selection of them that you'll have access to at any given time, just like Diablo 3.

Since we are talking about DnD.

You've never heard about 1) wizard specialists - which prohibits you from using spells from opposite school BUT is viable because you gain more spells from chosen school AND also bonuses for favourite school.
2) priest elemental spheres, priest choice of patron god and priest alignments, all 3 of them change spell choice.

3) Also failing to mention sorcerors, who have to choose skills they use and its hard to change choice (1 spell per lvl starting from lvl 5 if i remember right).
4) Faling to mention Metamagic feats, which are optional and there is plenty of them.

Get a clue about what you are talking about, DnD creators do understand that a choice that can be reversed in no time is not real choice at all.

 

[Stabwound]

D&D2 in general might have that, but Baldur's Gate doesn't nor do very many of the D&D computer games at all that I know of. And I meant "cleric" and not priest, which isn't even a class, at least not in BG. BG clerics get all spells as they level up and there are no elemental spheres or gods. BG doesn't have sorcerers either, but BG2 does. Yes, there are specialist mages, I'll concede that, but again I believe BG is one of the few that does this. Metamagic feats, I'm pretty sure this is D&D3+ or at the very least it's not in BG or any D&D 1/2 game I can think of.

My mistake was saying "all D&D 1/2 computer games" because there's probably no 2 games that follow the rules the same way. I have no idea what the PnP D&D rules are exactly, I just know the implementations in some of the computer games which have turned into a random mash of mixed information in my brain. And seemingly yours too, because you're mixing up rules from various games and versions of D&D.

 

[Average Manatee]

I have to ask: Is regular trading still in? If so I expect a massive boost in non-Blizzard sanctioned item selling. Paying just to list an item is insane. Websites for D3 item trading without Blizzard taking a huge cut off the top are going to spring up quick, and average players aren't going to be adverse to using them like in D2 because item selling is determined to be a morally clean activity in D3.

 

[joeydohn]

I have to ask: Is regular trading still in? If so I expect a massive boost in non-Blizzard sanctioned item selling. Paying just to list an item is insane. Websites for D3 item trading without Blizzard taking a huge cut off the top are going to spring up quick, and average players aren't going to be adverse to using them like in D2 because item selling is determined to be a morally clean activity in D3.

I expect they'll still be looked down upon, at least by the majority, fanboys and so on.

In Eve Online you can buy a 30 day game card, convert it into an ingame item called a PLEX and sell that for in game funds (ISK) but there is no way to convert PLEXs back into real money, at least none sanctioned by CCP. The people I played (even those that funded their characters using GTCs/PLEX) with generally didn't agree with bots or black market websites selling ISK or items because of the shady things those websites do to get their stock that may impact on our gameplay. But whether or not the people I played with used them the market was still there, perhaps because they were cheaper although it wasn't by much.

There was already a lot of places that sold D2 equipment and I'm not really sure that will increase in D3 solely due to the RMAH.

 

[Captain Shrek]

We want to have the audience of CODW.
We want to have the audience of Skyrim.
We want to have the audience of Diablo 3.

There is more than one pattern here people.

 

[attackfighter]

That sounds really interesting, actually. Can you explain a little bit more, or at least give me something I could google? I was never that into SC (in a filthy betrayal of my Korean heritage), so I've never heard of this.

To elaborate on the Bisu build: prior to it Zerg were able to safely mass expand in the early game, putting them at an economic lead. Protoss had no reliable counter to this. Until the bisu build was invented. The Bisu build uses mass corsairs to chase away overlords (the only mobile detection Zerg has) in conjunction with dark templar to punish greedy Zergs by harassing them to death if they spread themselves too thinly, across too many expansions.

 

[Average Manatee]

I have to ask: Is regular trading still in? If so I expect a massive boost in non-Blizzard sanctioned item selling. Paying just to list an item is insane. Websites for D3 item trading without Blizzard taking a huge cut off the top are going to spring up quick, and average players aren't going to be adverse to using them like in D2 because item selling is determined to be a morally clean activity in D3.

I expect they'll still be looked down upon, at least by the majority, fanboys and so on.

In Eve Online you can buy a 30 day game card, convert it into an ingame item called a PLEX and sell that for in game funds (ISK) but there is no way to convert PLEXs back into real money, at least none sanctioned by CCP. The people I played (even those that funded their characters using GTCs/PLEX) with generally didn't agree with bots or black market websites selling ISK or items because of the shady things those websites do to get their stock that may impact on our gameplay. But whether or not the people I played with used them the market was still there, perhaps because they were cheaper although it wasn't by much.

There was already a lot of places that sold D2 equipment and I'm not really sure that will increase in D3 solely due to the RMAH.

Looked down upon for what? Conducting the exact same activity that Blizzard is offering without giving the most profitable gaming company in the world more money?

Bots are going to be selling the exact same shit through Blizzard's trade store. If anything they will be more likely to use Blizzard's store than a player store because with their bulk it's much more easily detectable. Paying Blizzard their bribe money to ignore the botting is a good idea.

 

[joeydohn]

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Looked down upon for what? Conducting the exact same activity that Blizzard is offering without giving the most profitable gaming company in the world more money?

Whether or not it's true Blizzard/CCP make it known, and in some cases you can experience these yourself in WoW and Eve, that these black market companies use spamming, hacking accounts, cheating/exploiting and botting to make money, some of which is said to damage the game's economy and others ruin some player's game experience. In the case of the PLEX and RMAH you're also 'potentially depriving' the company that made the game of money if you use black market sites in a similar way that video game copyright infringement does.[/quote]

 

[Metro]

Wonder if this will get to be as big as the Mass Effect 3 thread.

 

[Damned Registrations]

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Looked down upon for what? Conducting the exact same activity that Blizzard is offering without giving the most profitable gaming company in the world more money?

Whether or not it's true Blizzard/CCP make it known, and in some cases you can experience these yourself in WoW and Eve, that these black market companies use spamming, hacking accounts, cheating/exploiting and botting to make money, some of which is said to damage the game's economy and others ruin some player's game experience.

[/quote]

Of course, all that shit will be encouraged even more so by the existence of the RMAH than the black market. You thought item duping and account hacking was bad when only black market sites had cash incentive to do this shit? Now the whole player base has an excellent reason to want duped items or spam advertise their sales.

Anyone else remember how sales went in EQ? Before auction houses? Just hundreds of people in a zone spamming the shit out of the chat trying to sell their shit.

 

[kingcomrade22]

The only problem is you compare it with some imaginary D2 that had amazing skill choices and depth. Look at http://diablo.wikia.com/wiki/Bow_and_Crossbow_Skills, with the exception of strafe everything there is basically a rune effect. Yet apparently building a new char just to maximize one of those skills was oh so much fun.
Even funnier is how everyone agrees Diablo games are just for simple dumb fun yet some argue it's better for such a game to have "builds" based around using only a couple of skills and require hundreds of hours of play to develop. Screw jumping in game to use a variety of skills for 30 mins while blasting dumb monsters, better grind for 6 hours for that hammerdin that's gonna be oh so much fun when the build is done.

This is exactly what I said on like page 2 or something. It's hilarious watching these retards fight and bicker over who has more elite taste in Diablo games, even though D2 was just as mindless as any call of duty game.

 

[Dexter]

Lol, I can't believe these retards arguing about there being "choice" in Diablo 3, in D2 I spent hours planning and re-rolling chars, saving Stat/Skillpoints (and calculating the free skill and stat-points you got through quests like the stat potion or Tyrael) to pick the right things at the right time and getting to equip certain gear at the best possible time (which was specially picked and likely socketed for a certain build), trying out different new builds and also making a game out of how to get to the harder difficulties faster and basically speedrun the game over and over for different builds. (that is until they fucking ruined the Skill system with 1.10) Just cause some fucktards looked up what they considered the "best builds" doesn't take from my fun to experiment with them.

And now some mouthbreathers are telling me that being able to pick different skills you get automatically every level from a drop-down box is the same as that, herp-derp? And that constitutes a choice? Fucking lol.

I can see all sorts of issues developing with that. I actually find this the most interesting aspect of D3, and I don't mean that as a snide criticism. I honestly find this quite interesting, and how it works is probably the most revolutionary thing about D3. If it works and players don't grow to hate it then it will change many things about the way these persistent on-line games work.

The only "issue" I wanted to see develop from this is Activision Blizzard getting sued and fucked for illegal gambling:
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2012/01/123_102230.html
http://daeity.blogspot.de/2011/09/diablo-3-and-illegal-online-gambling.html

Unfortunately they chicken shit out of it and apparently dropped the "flat fee" and will satisfy themselves with only charging twice (they'll take money off of every sale made and whenever someone wants to change their virtual money into real money):
http://daeity.blogspot.de/2012/02/gambling-detected-rmah-changed.html
Eh, there's still a good chance for getting them trying to aid and abet money laundering, terrorism and the likes.

 

[Livonya]

Lol, I can't believe these retards arguing about there being "choice" in Diablo 3, in D2 I spent hours planning and re-rolling chars, saving Stat/Skillpoints (and calculating the free skill and stat-points you got through quests like the stat potion or Tyrael) to pick the right things at the right time and getting to equip certain gear at the best possible time (which was specially picked and likely socketed for a certain build), trying out different new builds and also making a game out of how to get to the harder difficulties faster and basically speedrun the game over and over for different builds. (that is until they fucking ruined the Skill system with 1.10) Just cause some fucktards looked up what they considered the "best builds" doesn't take from my fun to experiment with them.

And now some mouthbreathers are telling me that being able to pick different skills you get automatically every level from a drop-down box is the same as that, herp-derp? And that constitutes a choice? Fucking lol.

I can see all sorts of issues developing with that. I actually find this the most interesting aspect of D3, and I don't mean that as a snide criticism. I honestly find this quite interesting, and how it works is probably the most revolutionary thing about D3. If it works and players don't grow to hate it then it will change many things about the way these persistent on-line games work.

The only "issue" I wanted to see develop from this is Activision Blizzard getting sued and fucked for illegal gambling:
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2012/01/123_102230.html
http://daeity.blogspot.de/2011/09/diablo-3-and-illegal-online-gambling.html

Unfortunately they chicken shit out of it and apparently dropped the "flat fee" and will satisfy themselves with only charging twice (they'll take money off of every sale made and whenever someone wants to change their virtual money into real money):
http://daeity.blogspot.de/2012/02/gambling-detected-rmah-changed.html
Eh, there's still a good chance for getting them trying to aid and abet money laundering, terrorism and the likes.

Thanks for those links. Very interesting. If this was a smaller game they could probably fly under the radar with some of these issues, but as it will be very popular I suspect they will have all sorts of legal problems.

Sooner or later they are going to be forced to file informational forms to whatever government a player lives in. PayPal was forced to do this last year by the US government. They will then have to get your social security number (if you live in the USA) and then they are going to have to follow all sorts of international banking laws.

It just seems like a massive can of worms. If it doesn't work well then they will be fine, but if it is possible to make actual money from their auction house then they will be holding a lot of money and will essentially become a bank.

They probably need as much legal talent as programming talent.

 

[joeydohn]

They probably need as much legal talent as programming talent.

I have the urge to go dig up Blizzard's financial reports and find out how much they spend on legal magic.

 

[Average Manatee]

satisfy themselves with only charging twice (they'll take money off of every sale made and whenever someone wants to change their virtual money into real money):

Sounds like a bank indeed.

The fact that blizzard takes a flat cut out of the bottom of each item is going to be ridiculous. Sell a $1.50 item and Blizzard makes $1.25 of that now and the 25c you have gets reduced further when you actually want Blizzard to pay you. The idiots thinking they are going to make money selling the random shit they find crack me up.

 

[Dexter]

It just seems like a massive can of worms. If it doesn't work well then they will be fine, but if it is possible to make actual money from their auction house then they will be holding a lot of money and will essentially become a bank.

They probably need as much legal talent as programming talent.

Yeah, it'll certainly be interesting.
One of the first interviews I've seen on the change actually had Rob Pardo being asked about money laundering and he kind of starts laughing maniacally a little and going to his happy place saying that they will "monitor" it: http://www.g4tv.com/videos/54483/diablo-3-auction-house-blizzard-explains-why/?quality=hd

There was also the issue with South Korea, apparently not being approved because of the implications of Online Gambling was such a big issue for them that Mike Morhaime (their CEO) flew over there unscheduled to talk to the people personally, and it also led to the first delay of the game: http://beefjack.com/news/diablo-3s-worldwide-released-foiled-by-south-korea/ , which was personally announced by Mike Morhaime just one day after: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/3552227 , in the end they had to remove the Auction House entirely from the South Korean version of the game to get it approved.

 

[Average Manatee]

Well, he laughs because the thought of getting tons of free money under the guise of plausible deniability brings joy to his and Kotick's heart.

 

[Livonya]

At first I thought the "money laundering" thing was sort of a joke... not that they might not be in violation of money laundering legal issues, but that it couldn't actually be used for that.

However, after thinking about it for a few moments, it actually could be used for real world money laundering. All you have to do is continually list items from one account and buy them with another account, and then have the buyer give them back to the seller, and start the whole process over again.

Cost effective to the criminal entity? I have no idea. But the mechanism is clearly there especially if they aren't keeping track of the interactions between buyer and seller.

It may be that if an account has more than $5,000 in transactions during a year then they have to file paperwork with the IRS.

PayPal has to file paperwork to me and to the IRS due to that reason right now, and I suspect PayPal will become more and more complicated as time goes on. I personally do all sorts of business via PayPal to undeclared business entities that are breaking the law by operating outside of the legal system. Sooner or later the IRS will crack down on this.

 

[joeydohn]

However, after thinking about it for a few moments, it actually could be used for real world money laundering. All you have to do is continually list items from one account and buy them with another account, and then have the buyer give them back to the seller, and start the whole process over again.

Cost effective to the criminal entity? I have no idea. But the mechanism is clearly there especially if they aren't keeping track of the interactions between buyer and seller.

It may be that if an account has more than $5,000 in transactions during a year then they have to file paperwork with the IRS.

It depends how Blizzard monitors the items/auctions, even then you could just cycle accounts. I'd guess overhead would be the biggest problem, it'd look weird if you kept selling shitty items to newbies for $100 and $1.25 is a lot out of $5-10, although I'm not well versed in money laundering. If a duplicating bug is ever discovered then I guess that could be used to duplicate expensive items and then those could be used for laundering I suppose.

 

[Dexter]

Gold farming in general can be used for some shady shit, personally remember these two cases from not long ago for instance:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/36423/North_Korean_Government_Funded_In_Part_By_Gold_Farming.php
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gaming-scam

It remains to be seen if giving Blizzard a piece of the cake still remains viable, but with their attitude they're also practically trying to "legalize" it and make the machine work for them instead.

 

[Livonya]

Like I was saying, the auction house is probably the most interesting thing about D3.

It reminds me a bit of the book Halting State by Charles Stross in which the plot is centered around a virtual bank robbery as well as games/gamers being used by governments/institutions in other than obvious ways.

The internet is such a mess when you get into any issues involving money.

I assume that games will come up with a solution for 3rd party venders. It makes no sense at all for 3rd party venders to make money from these games, but at the same time once the auction houses are incorporated into the game design there is a pretty good chance that the games will become insidious....

Though really the Facebook games are already really insidious with the free2play model. I am sure they can get uglier, but perhaps people's tolerance for abuse from something that is supposed to be entertainment will dwindle over time.

Fun reading about these issues.

 

[Stabwound]

Since everything goes through Paypal as a 3rd party, which already has strict anti-laundering protection in place, I doubt you could really accomplish much through Blizzard's system.

Edit: Maybe some obscure regions won't use PP?