tl-dr

Wow, you have definitely done your homework. I had no idea that this was even happening. To be honest I never planned on buying the game. I played Diablo but never bought any expansion packs or DII. I never really cared for it as a whole online. I always just played it stand alone. I did subscribe to WoW for a year basically to get DIII but now I’m not so sure I have any interest in playing it either. Maybe if the AH was cash driven but between players kinda like I craft some uber epic thing and sell it to you for $5.00 via the AH and I get the money maybe minus .01 percent or something. But I’m not going to line the pockets of Blizz anymore than I already do.

When I first heard about the real money AH, I had the same concerns about buying power as well. For D3, however, I think this is a problem that’s not actually there. We need to hold back on knee-jerk reactions and think about how real money is integrated into D3 in order to comprehend its effects.

Firstly, like you said, the players run the stores themselves. This means the supply of good items is at the whim of drop-rates/chance, a factor that is out of the player’s control. This point alone throws out all notions of ‘fairness’ in how a person acquires good items, but I’ll get to that in a second. Basically, players with credit cards can’t necessarily purchase the best gear they want, whenever they want (not upon initial release of the game, at least).

Secondly, D3 is first and foremost a co-op game. If your party members are that much stronger as a result of buying better items, then that benefits you! it’s in no way detrimental to your game-play experience aside from perhaps feeling like you have a smaller e-peen (forgive me for using that term; no offence intended). The great thing about D3 is that no one would know which players bought items aside from the buyers themselves.

Thirdly, yes, it is true there is a PvP aspect in D3, but this component has been stressed time and time again by Blizzard that it is in no way meant to be competitive or super balanced (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E452S_fJwA). This means that before we even look at gear, certain combinations of classes/abilities will already be better than others; i.e. the game mechanics themselves are ‘unfair’! In addition, you will only be matched up in PvP with players of similar standing as you, so the benefits of buying items is practically negated in a PvP setting.

Fourthly, I think the point of putting in ‘effort’ is moot. If I was playing with some friends and I came across a good item that is irrelevant to my character (e.g. I’m a melee character but I found a ranged weapon), I would give it to my friend without anything in return (this is just me). Does that mean my friend is less deserving of the item simply because they didn’t put in the ‘effort’ or time to farm for it? This is essentially the same implication with ‘buying’ power, except instead of ‘selling’ power, I’m just outright giving it away! (so the person becoming more powerful isn’t even losing money from their wallet!). Hurray, I have successfully circumvented the game mechanic of drop-rate/chance with my own generosity, and I don’t think anyone would view that as being unfair

The ‘entire landscape of the game for everyone’ will not be changed at all. Even if it does change, I don’t see how the change will be negative for anyone. I understand, agree with and support your fundamental point of not allowing money to influence game mechanics. With the way money is integrated into D3, no game mechanics will be impinged upon. Like you said, Blizzard will not have their own online store selling good items. The only thing real money will affect is trade; trade in terms of facilitating it between players. What including real money in D3 will actually achieve is:

1) Give people who find good gear more options to gain a reward. In this case, it’s real money, but more importantly, money that does not ruin the game for anyone. Wouldn’t it be fair for someone who has invested the ‘effort’ in acquiring a good item to be rewarded in a way they choose, aside from having the item itself? Also, some people don’t play for items

2) Give people who want/need better items more options to acquire them, aside from being at the whim of drop-rates/chance or time. Let’s face it, some people just don’t have much time to play, and to deny these people the experience of having good items because of such a reason is unfair. If anything, I don’t think we should be viewing this as money impacting on the game. More fundamentally, it is a player’s time that is the true resource at play. The real money AH allows for the valuation of time in the game world. The great thing is that the player’s themselves (BOTH buyers and sellers) have the power to decide what that value is!

Lastly, the absolute bottom-line about real money is that it will allow some players to be ‘stronger’ than others EARLIER than others. If we take away money from the equation, we realise that that’s already the case anyway (and it has nothing to do with deservedness if we’re debating it over the context of chance-based item drops).

Whoa! that was long. Thanks for reading
Henry F.

@ Jacob: A very prompt response, Jacob! You, too, raise fair points. Allow me to share my opinions on them:

1) This is a valid point, but again, one I do not think applies to D3. Firstly, as far as I know, D3 will not be facilitating the sale of characters (I follow most gaming news, developments and updates quite closely – especially if they’re games I intend to play!). However, I can not guarantee or foresee that this won’t change in the future.

In terms of PvE, the beauty with D3 is that the difficulty of content is progressional. That is, in order to unlock the next difficulty, you must first have surpassed the previous difficulty. There will be a total of 4 difficulties; normal, nightmare, hell, inferno. The way that Blizzard has designed the difficulties is that items alone will not be enough to grant you passage to the next one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj1xMoFsdBU). So ‘end game n00bs’, no matter how good their items may be, will not be able to reach/have the opportunity to fail at end-game content/difficulties because they simply won’t have access to it if they’re not good enough as a player. Which means we can remove the ‘end game’ part of their name and just call them n00bs You can sleep easy on this one, Jacob!

Even if items had the capability to negate player n00bness (which I don’t think it would), then that in itself would allay your concerns, as these ‘n00bs’ would be ‘beating’ the game content anyway … but I digress. As the difficulty ramps up, so too will the quality of items/loot. So what this means for PvE is that the only reason people will be playing further into harder difficulties is simply to acquire better items (and bragging rights/online achievements, I suppose). Now, if we look at it from an end-game perspective as you have suggested, then that’s a bit of a contradiction; why would these ‘end-game n00bs’ with the best items be playing the harder difficulties just to acquire items they already have?

In terms of PvP, being good in that part of the game will boil down to a baptism of fire. No amount of killing monsters (PvE) will prepare a player to battle a human player. The only thing PvE will help with is in knowing what abilities you have; it won’t even help a player gauge how useful such abilities will be in PvP because the different setting will mean the actual mechanics of the abilities will work differently (e.g. a stun in PvE will last 10 seconds non-diminishing vs. in PvP where it lasts for 2 seconds, and can be broken out of by the opposing player). Basically, bad players are bad and good players are good. Real money doesn’t cause the problem.

In summary of your point 1), money in D3, as far as I can tell, will not contribute to the cause of end-game n00bs in PvE as the difficulty setting will serve as a screening process. Unlike MMO’s where the traditional screening process was gear (which was obtainable simply through a matter of time, meaning one can remain being a bad player), D3 has a more comprehensive n00b-proof filter. In terms of PvP, bad players will just be bad, regardless of it they’ve bought their gear or not. They may have purchased the gear in the hopes of making up for their ‘badness’, but when it becomes apparent that that doesn’t help them, they’ll be forced to consciously improve, quit or continue to suck. If they continue to suck, then it is important to understand that that is not a consequence of having bought good items (so the problem lies within the player, and not money). In saying that, remember that we were once n00bs, too! (and not everyone is cut out to be pro, unfortunately).

2) I think Blizzard has been very careful in considering how their system will interact with gold farmers. The first and foremost guiding principle behind the real money AH is to ensure safety in trades/transactions, so players do not/will not utilise 3rd parties. In saying that, this means these gold farmer 3rd parties can still operate, but within the confines of Blizzards rules and conditions, as well as other real-world constraints such as currency conversion and whatnot. As far as I know, the real money AH will operate in a very similar fashion to ebay. Blizzard will make a flat-rate amount off of every real money purchase, there will be listing fees, listing limits etc. So as far as policing goes, Blizzard has a bunch of passive mechanisms in place. Even if these fail, which I don’t think they will, real world implications such as international transaction fees, currency conversion rates etc, will also help ensure things don’t go out of control. For a more comprehensive understanding of how the real moeny AH will be implemented, please view the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZirE9nd8ILc <– a 17 minute video, but the first 6 minutes shed a lot of light about what we're discussing.

I do share your opinion that Blizzard may not necessarily comprehend the long-term effects of their system, but I think they have enough measures and safeguards in place to be able to control for any destabilising effects because everything must happen within a system that they have created/understand. This ties in to one of the reasons why they revamped their online multiplayer service, i.e. Battle.net 2.0, in order to allow for these complex international interactions and transactions – But this is a topic outside the scope of what we're discussing

I think that this discussion needs to be framed a bit better perhaps. My question is: What do you get out of playing D3? What do you enjoy about playing games? Personally, I play games for a number of reasons, but the primary one for me is the competition. I love the competition. If your primary enjoyment is derived from seeing the story, or just from reaching the endgame and beating it, this AH structure will impact you in different ways and potentially less negatively.

For people who are more interested in the competitive aspect of games, real money does feel like an intrusion. Random drops are random, but knowing that everyone still plays by the same whims of fate makes the game feel more fair. When you can buy gear for cash though, you are taking away the satisfaction gained from feeling like you really accomplished something more than most players and that you earned your gear. Sure, a new player could waltz in and win the best gear in a week, but they earned that gear too. They played under the same rule system and the random number generator just loves them. That sense of satisfaction is at the very least substantially cheapened when people who have money can just buy what you put so much of your time into earning.

Another point is that many people play games to escape real life. You get home, you just want to relax and get your game on. You log in and you’re on equal footing with everyone else as far as the mechanics go. But if you log in and you are unable to enjoy parts of the game because you can’t afford to buy your gear with real cash, that idea that you could be equal to everyone else is gone.

Very interesting post, and this gives me the incentive I needed not to use that Diablo III beta key I’m pretty sure I saw in my inbox this morning.

I absolutely refuse to encourage any game that gives an advantage to players who can afford to pay more with real life $$ for better gear. I like competing (fairly) in the game, and to me the size of a player’s wallet is not a fair measurement.

It’s true that different people play games for different reasons. As such, would it not be silly to play a game that doesn’t align with such reason(s)? e.g., you wouldn’t play chess and criticise it for its lack of a compelling plot, you wouldn’t play an action game and criticise it for being too fast-paced etc.

This is no different with D3 because it is a co-op game! One of the cornerstones of the franchise has been, and has always been, about co-operative play. Any element of PvP in Diablo was/is purely for funsies, e.g.:

In D1, the sorcerer was unquestionably the strongest class because magic was simply overpowered. If you were not a sorcerer, you were pretty much dead.

In D2, each class had their moments of godliness (except for the necromancer, lol) depending on the patch. Near the end of it all (‘end’ as in the last few patches), everything was a complete sh!tstorm because Blizzard decided to give everyone the ability to teleport. If you didn’t have teleport, you were pretty much dead.

I don’t expect things to be any much different in D3 because it is first and foremost a co-op game! As such, it is erroneous to force competitiveness into D3, or play D3 competitively, where it was never designed or meant to be played that way in the first place. Otherwise, you’ll just be (knowingly) setting yourself up to be disappointed. What’s worse, the disappointment/dissatisfaction (i.e. D3′s lack of competitiveness/fair competition) is then blamed on a system (i.e. the real money AH) for disrupting their subjectively enforced sense of competition in a game that was not meant for it!

I myself, like many others here, really enjoy competitiveness in a game (Starcraft 2 master’s player, if that means anything to any of you ). Hell, if Blizzard announced right this instant that D3 did away with co-op play and will be changed into an e-sport, I’ll be most ecstatic. I will also immediately switch my stance from pro-real-money-AH to vehemently anti-real-money-AH.

Just for the record, I’m completely fine with people not playing D3 if it’s not their type of game, people can play whatever floats their boat. Just don’t look at the D3 boat and then call it a bad boat because it doesn’t sail to where you want to go

P.S. I read your Star Wars Galaxy article, Jacob. Very very interesting. I sincerely hope that D3 does not end up like that!

D3 is a boat that has been predestined to voyage to Co-op Island* lol

I’m probably going a bit off topic here, but the very nature of pugs is that they will almost always perform less efficiently than a tight-knit/organised group (amongst friends with voice chat etc). If you’re able to run end-game content without any problems in a pug, that’s actually a reflection on the game being too ‘easy-mode’/not challenging enough to be able to grant any true sense of competition against the game in the first place (unless if you regard winning, despite bad team-mates, as competition in itself – which I don’t think you do, haha). To liken this to WoW where content has become puggable, instances have gotten so dumbed down and easy-mode in subsequent expansions that it actually detracts from the integrity of the game.

Pugging in a game like D3 may, more often than not, mean you’ll be grouped with people who might be playing for reasons incongruous to yours, e.g. I want to play as a fire wizard because fire looks the coolest. However, if I want to be the ‘best’ wizard possible in terms of killing things quickly, I should actually never use any fire spells because they’re weak. To liken this to WoW once again, this was a problem characterised by cookie cutter talents/builds where players were shunned, and in some cases ridiculed, for not playing in a way that was deemed to be standard. And to be honest, that kind of thing has no place in a co-op game like D3.

If you are competitive against the game, you begin to constrain the gaming playstyle of others around you (unintentionally or not). That is, if other players are not specced the right way, or are using abilities in the wrong order etc, then they might not playing the game ‘right in your eyes. This is what I presume you’re referring to when you say ‘someone didn’t know how to play’; and not the lack of common sense such as a player running around naked, or healers standing on the front line :p

In an MMO like WoW, you pretty much know the underlying reason why a player runs certain content (battlegrounds, arena, dungeons etc) and thus have fair reason to be disgruntled when a team-mate is bad (also, thank goodness there are separate roleplaying servers). But even then, pugs are still pretty much a bad idea if you’re serious about being competitive against the game.

tl;dr – If you intend to be competitive at all, regardless of it’s in a co-op game against AI/npc’s, I advise you to avoid pugging! In saying that, should you choose to play D3, I would actually quite like to play with you

Thanks for steering things back on track

To keep it clean and simple, my only retort to the gear check is the difficulty check in D3; normal, nightmare, hell and inferno. I admit this system is not 100% perfect, either, as I can easily ask someone to reach the max difficulty on my behalf and then I am free to n00b it up in inferno myself lol. I think one of the reasons why Blizzard tied real-money into D3 is because the n00b filters is predominantly in the difficulty check, whereas with WoW it’s predominantly in the gear check. That’s not to say there is no gear check in D3, I just think that the gear check is much less significant than the difficulty check, seeing as how it can be mitigated by real-money.

As for money unbalancing the gameplay:
1) I don’t think it would
2) I can see how it could

I personally treat end game n00bs as any other kind of n00b. They will either get better (eventually) or I just avoid them when I lose patience. Is endgame content the right place to ‘get better’? probably not. Should I ever have to deal with n00bs in end game? probably not. Will there still be end game n00bs even if there wasn’t a real-money AH? probably. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see when D3 releases to witness the effects of real-money in the game

@Veri: I do not mean to come across as inflammatory, but in response to your point, consider the following:

- What about people who buy and use strategy guides? Will you not support games that sell them?
- What about people with better internet connections who don’t suffer lag? Will you not support games that require an internet connection?
- What about people with better graphic cards that enhance important gameplay details?Will you not support games that require good graphics cards?
- What about people with the more responsive mice and pads? Will you not support games that rely on precision?

The list goes on.

I understand why some people don’t want the real world to get entangled with the game world, but the truth is that it has been and always will be related, in some way or another, through money. If the possibility of buying good items is an issue, then I suppose all the other aforementioned points are issues, too, because after all, the player is essentially gaining an edge over others through advantages gained via real money. It’s easy for us to see the potential problem with the RMAH in D3 because the link is conspicuous. But if we think about it, a plethora of other less conspicuous factors already exist.

Ignorance is bliss, I guess?

I just wanted to point out that we’re two weeks into the game now, and sadly, your article was prophetic. Well done sir.

I’m gonna put DIII right next to the new Star Wars films on my wall of disappointment.

Having played Diablo 3 since release, I believe an update is in order!

The RMAH has not been released yet. However, some key things have happened that pose as a serious risk to the RMAH’s legitimacy.

Firstly, the in-game economy (just gold and items – we’re not talking about cash yet) is in complete shambles. Basically, some players have found several exploits in the game which allow them to obtain rare and valuable items at an unintendedly fast rate. The exploits are ‘legit’ in that they were built into the game; the players didn’t tinker with coding or programs (yet). Sadly, the flaws of Blizzard’s game design were not apparent until it was too late …

To give a simple example, there is a certain rare chest that spawns 10 seconds away from a waypoint (a teleporter thing) 100% of the time in certain areas. People caught on to the 100% spawn rate and repeatedly loaded up that same part of the game to access the chest.

So! the blame is on Blizzard’s part for that kind of oversight. The impact it has had is immense, to say the least, as the market is flooded with items that were supposed to be difficult to obtain. But hey, let’s cut Blizzard some slack because sh!t happens. Fair enough, whatever. However! what I will call them out on, is their relatively slow response and some would argue, inadequate, way in rectifying the situation. The items obtained from the exploit were not removed from the game (how could they? it was Blizzard’s fault for bad implementation in the first place). By the time these exploits were nerfed, the market was already messed up. The impact of the exploit was simply too fast and too great.

What will the future hold for the auction houses now that all the good stuff is readily available? Will the prices be cheaper since there is so many of them? Will the prices soar sky high after the exploits had been nerfed? Either way, the players who did not take advantange of the exploit, knowingly or unknowingly, deem this to be unfair and are up in arms against Blizzard for the misstep.

Secondly, aside from the exploits themselves, the ranged classes are having a much easier time in the harder difficulties when compared with the melee classes. This can be attributed to a number of reasons, but the main one is that the ranged classes were unintentionally less gear dependent. This basically meant that ranged classes were farming the harder areas sooner, and more effectively, than the melee classes. As a result, those who played a ranged class were inadvertently getting a major head-start in the market as they were earning disproportionate amounts of gold compared to the poor melee player who couldn’t do so even if they tried (say for a select few hardcore gamers).

Thirdly, HACKERS! Despite the short amount of time the game has been out, there have been many incidences where people have had their accounts compromised – the victim’s characters stripped of gold and items. Aside from the forums being inundated with angry threads about being hacked, this has happened to a few friends of mine as well as notable reviewers (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-21-diablo-3-accounts-hacked-gold-and-items-stolen). Blizzard has denied such claims thus far and have shied away from their systems being insecure (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5149619846).

On a more personal note, Diablo 3 is fun, but it pales in light of all these glaring flaws. If the aforementioned problems did not exist, it would definitely have been a AAA+ game lauded for years to come. But as it stands, Diablo 3 is fast becoming a horrible stain on Blizzard’s reputation.

Stay tuned for more updates!

@Jacob A. “Gameronomist” Ratliff

Hi Jacob, I would love to write a piece about the state of D3′s gold economy How should I go about this? You can better reach me through xian.feng@sydney.edu.au