Just some funny stuff about the RMT AH

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but it also has the potential to damage the game economy and overall experience for the many thousands of others who play World of Warcraft for fun

We still think that's true for a MMO in which thousands of players co-mingle in a persistent world and vie for supremacy in eSport competitions or 'world first' boss kills in raids. Neither of these are true though for a co-op action RPG.

The worst that could happen is you open your game up to the public, someone jumps in wearing some awesome gear, and you don't know if he found those items himself. But that'd be the case whether we offered an official way to buy items from other players or not.

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we feel that players can find ample equipment and money for their characters within the game through their own adventuring and questing.

The same is not true for Diablo in which all items are randomized in both affixes and drop chances from all enemies. We know that trading is necessary in Diablo games to build a solid character as you could play forever and still never see a specific item you're after.

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Yes - but why oh why the 180?

I always thought that Blizzard games were the last bastion of 'no ingame advantage can be bought for real money'.

Bashiok, I am a big fan of yours and generally agree with what you say. But I cannot express my dislike for this new development strongly enough.

Bottom line is people are going to buy those in-game advantages whether we want them to or not. We have a subscription-based game in World of Warcraft and try as we might we still struggle to keep pace with those looking to turn a profit. Why not bring that in-house, make it secure, make it guaranteed, and provide a safe way for players to sell to other players?

This is specifically only a decent idea in our minds for Diablo III because an in-game advantage doesn't mean you steal a world first, or up your arena rating, or edge out in a competition. Diablo III is a co-op game. If you're buying power it's to jump into games and help your buddies kill demons faster, and guess what, they get more drops in less time. In our eyes that's not buying an advantage as a selfish measure, it's really just kicking more ass in co-op games with your friends. It's apples and oranges, if you will, to something like an in-game advantage in a game like World of Warcraft.

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Okay...I see your point Bashy. But don't you see why so many people are worried?

The introduction of real money into the system means people wanting top tier stuff will pay a fair chunk of RL money.

When the first guy pays 500$ for an item, things start to inflate. Suddenly, casual players or those not willing to buy with their real money are locked out of it. And the inflation will continue.

If there was some way to strictly limit how much an item can be sold for and curb this effect...then maybe. But I can predict that this is going to go all kinds of pear shaped.

We may have upper limits. We may have minimums. Listing fees are flat so it's not in our best interest to let it get away from us. That said, it's supply and demand, and we want this to be a market run by the players. Every rule we impose could upset that and suddenly it's not players setting market values, but Blizzard deciding how it goes. I still think some limits are likely, though.

I have no doubt that the gold auction house will by-far outweigh the real money auction house in scope and amount of items available. The good thing here is that being able to sell gold for real money will naturally keep the gold auction house economy in-check a bit. Not a lot, but it should be helpful.