real money auction house....

[mts]

anyone picturing themselves buying stuff?

i wouldn't rule out selling, but i just don't see myself paying real money to buy anything.

[Shaun]

Selling yes buying no.

I can't see buying items in a game I paid for. Buying an item in LoL, yes. But even that is limited and that is cause the game was free.

[mts]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2012 ... -sales.ars

some background info...

[Shaun]

Sellers will be faced with an additional 15 percent fee if they want the purchase price to be transferred to a third-party service like PayPal. Blizzard also warns that "additional fees from PayPal may apply." The only way to avoid these transfer fees is by putting the sale proceeds into a Battle.net balance, which can be used to purchase digital editions of Blizzard games as well as certain in-game purchases in World of Warcraft.

So to me this means if I sell enough in game items I can use it to buy my next Blizzard game? That would be freakin awesome.

Not sure I like the spin of this but if I can manage to get enough items sold to buy HOS I would actually be happy about that. I doubt that would happen though. Probably rather rare to get an item worth enough or enough items that would sell.

[mts]

i guess we need to find out which class is the multishot amazon equivalent in d3... then load up big time on the +magic find.

after which we can start saving up the money to buy mists of pandera? lol.

(it would be cool if you can make enough to pay the wow subscription i suppose.)

[carrier]

i guess we need to find out which class is the multishot amazon equivalent in d3... then load up big time on the +magic find.

after which we can start saving up the money to buy mists of pandera? lol.

(it would be cool if you can make enough to pay the wow subscription i suppose.)

there is no amazon equiv. the closes thing is the demon hunter i guess.

sure you could probably earn enough to pay for a wow sub, but you'd never actually play wow. you'd be farming 24/7. time hire some little chinese kids....

[mts]

once again... you guys are advocating sending jobs overseas. why can't you keep jobs here in the US by hiring illegal immigrants to do the farming?

[hoot80]

once again... you guys are advocating sending jobs overseas. why can't you keep jobs here in the US by hiring illegal immigrants to do the farming?

I like how you think! But I don't think it would take 24/7 farming to be able to make $60. I'm sure you could easily pull off $5-10 a week with pretty casual play...after going 24/7 for a week to get to Inferno difficulty. The 15% charge is pretty steep if you want to actually make money as opposed to making Blizzard cash, but I'm sure if you just want to buy the next Bliz release it won't be too hard to make that money. Keep in mind you can also sell gold and if the gold auction house gets out of sync with the RMAH you can make money that way as well.

For a simplified example, if an item on the gold AH costs 10,000 gold and the same item is selling for $10 on the RMAH that means that $1 = 1000 gold. But if you can sell gold on the RMAH for 2000 gold = $1 that means the RMAH values gold lower than the gold AH. Buy 10,000 gold from the RMAH for $5, buy the item on the gold AH for 10,000 gold, sell item on RMAH for $10 and you just made a $5 profit. Woo hoo! I'm rich!

Of course, you also have to find items that people would actually want to spend real money to buy and the prices I just used were only for easy math purposes. But I think someone with a little free time to check both markets for a few rare items and do some price comparisons could easily make $5-$10 a week without even really farming because it's unlikely that both markets will always be in sync.

[mts]

there is no amazon equiv. the closes thing is the demon hunter i guess.

by "amazon equivalent" i meant a class that can kill things ridiculously fast from range (ie relatively safely.) i don't know how the classes work mechanically.

For a simplified example, if an item on the gold AH costs 10,000 gold and the same item is selling for $10 on the RMAH that means that $1 = 1000 gold. But if you can sell gold on the RMAH for 2000 gold = $1 that means the RMAH values gold lower than the gold AH. Buy 10,000 gold from the RMAH for $5, buy the item on the gold AH for 10,000 gold, sell item on RMAH for $10 and you just made a $5 profit. Woo hoo! I'm rich!

trying to play the real money AH against the gold AH and trying to somehow make money there, i'm kinda doubtful about that. i suspect lots of people will be trying to live in that area between markets and profiting that way. margins there will be pretty thin. more likely what will happen is that something valuable will drop every few hours of game play and that can be turned around on the AH for a little cash. so a casual player who gets in a few hours a week, might get enough drops to make a little on the side.

[Trick]

The real challenge will come from trying to be the first to find the new "Buriza", figuring out how best to force it to drop, and scoring on the market before everyone else figures it out

[bokou]

The 15% charge is pretty steep if you want to actually make money as opposed to making Blizzard cash, but I'm sure if you just want to buy the next Bliz release it won't be too hard to make that money.

I don't really feel that 15% is that out of touch... sure it seems like a lot but you're talking going from $15 to $12.75, from $100 to $75. There were AH cuts in WoW and you barely noticed them. There's usually fees associated with moving money around from one investment to actual liquidation.

[hoot80]

I'm just saying that Blizzard either takes 100% of the money you make by making it only available to the Blizzard store, or they take 15% of the money you make and allow you to use it for something outside Blizzard. It's still a pretty good deal given the fact that you can actually make money playing a video game. You probably shouldn't quit your day job, but you can make some money.

I don't plan on using the RMAH to buy things, but I might use up my free allotment of postings. I believe that is still part of the plan. From what I understand you are able to post a certain number of things for sale each week without incurring the standard Blizzard charge, which was stated would be a nominal flat fee and not a percentage.

[sime]

No no and no.

I think it's incredibly lame to have someone play your character for you to get it to max level, or to spend real money to buy something virtual for your character.

Just play the damn game yourself and earn your virtual goodies. If you can't be bothered to do that, you are pretty sad.

[carrier]

No no and no.

I think it's incredibly lame to have someone play your character for you to get it to max level, or to spend real money to buy something virtual for your character.

Just play the damn game yourself and earn your virtual goodies. If you can't be bothered to do that, you are pretty sad.

while i agree with you, sime, we are the moral minority. there will always be a market for gold farming and item farming services in these types of games, and there will always be people willing to pay for those services. in the past, game devs view these services as illegitimate and against the rules.

i think blizz is taking the right approach here and making it legitimate and making it a part of the rules. they are effectively cutting out the middle man and stopping these kinds of services from making any kind of money from blizz's customers, or consumers of the game. instead the customers can make all the moeny (if they so desire).

will there still be gold/item farmers? yep! but they are at the mercy of the D3 market. they can no longer set their own prices. if they flood the market, they suffer the consequences.



i'm curious what might happen if a new company springs up, and all they do is play the D3 market... hmmmm.

[Trick]

i'm curious what might happen if a new company springs up, and all they do is play the D3 market... hmmmm.

This is so funny to me because of something I read over the weekend. I was looking over some tax documents which I must file soon with the State of Alabama, and I found this term that was new to me "Electing Family Limited Liability Entity". It looked pretty nice because its taxes are capped at a very low level, but there are very strict rules on how its assets must be structured and handled.

It might be a perfect fit for playing the D3 market