Diablo 3

[Tseoth]

Lut Gholein Nightmare Offencive Palace Guard....essential for any skelimancers in D2

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/08/01/diabl ... eal-money/

This is going to be interesting. On Tuesday, Blizzard invited us to their headquarters in Irvine, California to announce that Diablo 3 will feature an auction house that lets players buy and sell in-game items for real money.

Yep, going to be interesting...

Maybe this, and that you have to be online to play, means they paid more attention to preventing cheats in multiplayer this time...

[Turhan Bey]

Excellent idea and I fully support it. I don't know how it will prevent cheating, and in fact it seems like it may encourage it, but it should certainly encourage Blizzard to ensure that anti-cheating measures are always effective. I can see a lot of dedicated players turning this into a small business.

I wonder, though, if players and/or Blizzard can get into some legal gray areas with this idea. How does one ensure that the buyer actually pays? Assuming that the money goes to Blizzard, will the company then cut a check to the sellers every month or something? And legally, anybody who makes real money out of this must report it as taxable income...

EDIT: The answer was further down the linked article:

Cashing out will be dealt with by a third party Blizzard aren’t ready to announce, and that party will charge a fee for the withdrawal. If you don’t withdraw your funds, you can spend them on other items in the auction house, or to buy anything else from the Blizzard store – which carries digital versions of all their major games, and in-game pets for World of Warcraft.

I hope that they use PayPal as their third party. It'd be nice for the funds to be deposited directly into my account. Seriously though, they'll probably use a similar resource that is essentially an "online banking" establishment.

[Turhan Bey]

Info is starting to trickle/pour in. The most generally interesting are probably the beta gameplay videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjkNpBYEK1M

Start - Barbarian
0:56 - Witch Doctor
1:46 - Sorcerer
2:33 - Demon Hunter
3:25 - Monk
4:27 - multiplayer

[Rigsy]

I'm not sure how I feel about the real money auction house, part of me wants to go and kill credit card warriors and sell their stuff back to them (if that's even going to be a possibility). But with the recent pay to win uproar within Eve I wonder if even buying D3 and supporting this type of game development is a good idea?
I guess I can't make a clear cut decision on buying D3 until all the facts are on the table, the Diablo series got me into online gaming to begin with and I don't want to loose faith in the fact this could still turn out to be a fantastic game.

[Turhan Bey]

I'm rather non-chalant about it because I know that I won't even be touching the Arena. As a strictly PvE player and not even competing on the ladder, I couldn't care less if some other players pay for a head start, or even shell out a couple hundred USD to go straight to the endgame.

If I were considering PvP, though, then I would really be concerned.

Excellent idea and I fully support it. I don't know how it will prevent cheating, and in fact it seems like it may encourage it, but it should certainly encourage Blizzard to ensure that anti-cheating measures are always effective.

Diablo 2 was pretty good ten years ago, at least when played via battle.net. There were a few cases of the client knowing too much (the famous gambling exploit where you could use a packet sniffer to see what items were there, and positions of other players and mobs) and a few duping exploits, which as far as I know were eventually fixed. If they didn't manage to unlearn everything they learned from Diablo 2 then they should be golden.

As for the RMT store, it seems it's not available in hardcore mode so I guess I don't have an opinion on it.

[Warg Matar]

I'm rather non-chalant about it because I know that I won't even be touching the Arena. As a strictly PvE player and not even competing on the ladder, I couldn't care less if some other players pay for a head start, or even shell out a couple hundred USD to go straight to the endgame.

If I were considering PvP, though, then I would really be concerned.

I'm agreeing as far as this game goes. PVP will not ever be the same though, maybe they're hoping to build a new breed of pvpers to streem on south korean tv. Sponsored by Alienware, MS etc with the best gear both as far as their computer goes, but also ingame. It's not my kinda pvp though:P I'm most passionate about the new BF3. PVE is what I think of when thinking about Diablo.

[Rzwlu Niko]

I'm agreeing as far as this game goes. PVP will not ever be the same though, maybe they're hoping to build a new breed of pvpers to streem on south korean tv. Sponsored by Alienware, MS etc with the best gear both as far as their computer goes, but also ingame. It's not my kinda pvp though:P I'm most passionate about the new BF3. PVE is what I think of when thinking about Diablo.

I don't think the majority in the PvP/Dueling community in D2 found all their own gear legitimately.

The choice was either to create a high level MFing character and do over hundreds of MF runs (easily taking 60+ hours, very little of it actually entertaining), or buy something from a 3rd party for less than 3 USD.

For better or worse, the RMT/Item shops of D2 were a large part of the game and would have been a large part of D3, legal or otherwise.

[Warg Matar]

I think still it is going to become quite something larger when it is all in all legal. If a player wanted sponsorship it would be harder if he got caught cheating through illegal rmt, the game as a sport would suffer since high ranked pvpers would be scrutinized more by gm's etc.

[Irdalth Delrar]

I think still it is going to become quite something larger when it is all in all legal. If a player wanted sponsorship it would be harder if he got caught cheating through illegal rmt, the game as a sport would suffer since high ranked pvpers would be scrutinized more by gm's etc.

On the other hand, would a company really sponsor someone who bought all their gear and became good because of that?

[Shori Laya]

Didn't Blizzard state, that they won't even try to balance D3 for pvp, because it would be quite impossible to do so? It seems, that would disqualify the game for any kind of competetive esport anyways, right?

[Turhan Bey]

Back at BlizzCon 2008 during the panel Q&A, someone in the audience asked if the devs would add stuff to Diablo 3 so that it would become a competitive eSport similar to StarCraft 1/2. Pretty much the entire audience suddenly became silent for a few seconds, and then let out a subdued collective, "Uhh... no. Bad idea." The dev panel then confirmed that they are not looking to making it an eSport.

I haven't heard anything since then to indicate otherwise. The Arena is being included as a consensual PvP location for those few who do like the occasional fight, but the last that I heard it won't be any more than that.

[Warg Matar]

I think still it is going to become quite something larger when it is all in all legal. If a player wanted sponsorship it would be harder if he got caught cheating through illegal rmt, the game as a sport would suffer since high ranked pvpers would be scrutinized more by gm's etc.

On the other hand, would a company really sponsor someone who bought all their gear and became good because of that?

No. But someone good will simply emerge due to their skill, and with growing fame comes growing support. I'm not saying it will become a esport right away. Maybe not even at all, but say you want to cover all your bases, it does make it alot easier this way to not put legal brakes on the wheels before they start rolling.

[Syn Kasenumi]

Back at BlizzCon 2008 during the panel Q&A, someone in the audience asked if the devs would add stuff to Diablo 3 so that it would become a competitive eSport similar to StarCraft 1/2. Pretty much the entire audience suddenly became silent for a few seconds, and then let out a subdued collective, "Uhh... no. Bad idea." The dev panel then confirmed that they are not looking to making it an eSport.

I haven't heard anything since then to indicate otherwise. The Arena is being included as a consensual PvP location for those few who do like the occasional fight, but the last that I heard it won't be any more than that.

That and its not even arena like WoW's arena, its more of a Team Death Match variety if I read it right, so there will be respawning, and a score limit to reach by killing the opposing players so many times. Supposedly its to to make it more fun, and to avoid complete blow outs and encourage back and forth type matches. Sounds like fun really.