Diablo 3's auctionhouse

[Ishildur]

So, uh, wow. If you guys didn't check out MMOChampion today yet http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/948 ... Life-Money ... they'll have auction house in there. As in, 'sell loot and possibly characters for real dollars' auction house. I admit, I'm surprised. I can see the reasoning behind it (although I'm sure the gold/item sellers will find some other thing for the scam portion of their trade), but I'm still really really surprised. I guess if in any game it would work it would be in a hack'n'slash game like that. But still, mind, kind of blown right now.

[Thunderfly]

Without giving too much away...

1. This is awesome.

2. I wouldn't worry too much about gold farmers.

3. This is awesome.

[Daewen]

I see what they did there, and it is both awesome and clever. Diabolic, even! They've found a way to add micropayments to their game, but the players posting items pay both the listing fee* and a cut of the sale. Sure the player gets a share from auctions that succeed, but this is still a hell of a business.
*past the number of "free" listings they allow

[tethealla]

I guess we don't have to worry about the traditional goldfarmers anymore... because ALL of us will be goldfarmers. How can someone make money at being a goldfarmer if everyone is doing it. There really is longer a business.

And then:

after a cool-down period, trading it to another character or relisting it on either the gold-based or currency-based auction house

You don't have to worry about those playing the AH to make real cash. They can't relist items right away. I was never any good at playing the AH anyway =]

I guess Diablo is really the place to do something like this. You have no server economy to worry about screwing up. Well I guess the AH will become its own economy it itself.... but how that affects the game is limited. If something like this was placed in WoW, it'd have MUCH wider consequences.

[Ishildur]

Yeah, I don't think this will have too many effects on Diablo itself, or on WoW. I do think there will be some effects outside of Diablo though. I think in the end they'll honestly lose far more sales to the always online and no LAN things than ever to this despite the angry posts I've been seeing today. Those who hate the RCAH idea can can always just not use it, but if someone's internet connection makes consistent online play an issue or they were gonna be all about Diablo LAN parties... not much they can do, just not gonna happen. But this type of system does require that if you're gonna play, it has to be online, it has to be always kept on Blizzard's server and be subject to their security and monitoring.

What will be interesting to see is how this affects other games, because while you can usually trust Blizzard to get things right you can bet other companies are going to be watching this like hawks. And quite frankly a little (ok, maybe not so little) part of me is waiting in eager and horrific anticipation to see how say, Ubisoft or EA will implement something similar in their future games.

[Chamomile]

What I'm more curious to see is if Bliz will be sending out 1099MISC forms to all the people that decide to farm items for a living.

[Thunderfly]

What I'm more curious to see is if Bliz will be sending out 1099MISC forms to all the people that decide to farm items for a living.

Unlikely. It's the facilitator of the sale, not the seller. Same reason eBay doesn't issue 1099s. It does, however, provide links to 1099-K for the seller to complete and issue.

[Daewen]

Unlikely. It's the facilitator of the sale, not the seller. Same reason eBay doesn't issue 1099s. It does, however, provide links to 1099-K for the seller to complete and issue.

I'd like to see that 1099-K form done by the D3 art team.

[Werehamster]

"But the 25 Swords of Epic Pumpkin Smashing that I have in my mule's storage depreciated 25% from the time I bought them to when I sold them, why can't I claim a short term capital loss?"

[Pocky]

I imagine that someone will try to make a "LAN hack" for D3, like they're trying (succeeding?) for SC2.