Well if you haven’t heard the news by now, Blizz plans to give Diablo 3 an auction house that is capable of exchanging virtual goods and currencies for ACTUAL money! Now, I’ve seen quite a bit of rage and support for this in some forums, but I’m kind of on the fence with it. On the one hand, you’ve got people wanting to trade all sorts of items and they’ll do so through ebay or via less than reputable companies. Yeah, I’m sure all those gold sellers we see in wowlands have a nice 100% satisfaction rate… But on the other side… It’s kinda sleazy. Something just seems wrong with it. I mean, they’ve told us (us being the wow peeps) that transferring cash for items/gold/accounts was wrong and naughty and we’d get a time out for it. So to 180 on us like this seems a bit off.
Then you’ve got China. Sorry guys, gonna have to pick on y’all a bit more. I’d almost expect to see more than half (and that’s generous) of the sales being made were from item/gold farmers on the red shores of our big northern cousin. Seriously, it just legitimized their transactions. So was the whole gold farming = bad thing just wrong because the big brass wasn’t getting a cut? I know this is all a money game, but still… seems shady.
But then again, lets not forget that, so far, this only applies to Diablo 3. Granted the playstyle is very different than that of wowville, the morality and logistics of having a “player cash shop” might not be all that severe. It’ll probably end up being a decent thing for the D3 players anyways. HOWEVER, this does worry me some… given the small hit to subscription levels in our wows, the 1-20 F2P, and ever ambitious shop, I can’t help but wonder what the next step is. I’m all for making money off your IPs, but there are some limits. That said, I hope the good folks at Blizz HQ will NOT ever bring this system to wow. It would be a huge blow to the game and its subscribers. So… uh… fingers crossed. Cause all it would take is a guy in the conference room to say “oh hey, we made like a few million dollars with this D3 auction house… how bout we do it to wow?” and the investors would start work on building a large silo to house all their gold coins… for swimming purposes… cause… you get the idea.
Loading ...
I have returned for my throne!
been a while >)
No no no no no! I started playing the game because it seemed more or less fair for everybody — gear indicating players’ skills, then achievements etc (although nowadays I get the impression some classes/races are priviledged, oh the economy…), but Real money AH would be just wrong. Unless on a totally separate world (not server), where dollar-players would not be able to participate in Arena, rated BGs etc
PS. Welcome back to the throne, Sk1nn4h ;P
idk… it would just flood the market with so much gold… things would become so expensive that you’d have to buy it with cash. >\
ending recesion? mmmmm…..
draco your spoilsport dude.
I think a real cash AH could do a lot of good and a lot of bad to WoW- it would depend on how it was implemented and what Blizzard did to prevent abuse. The only thing I’d never want is gold sales. WoW needs more gold sinks, not more player gold income.
yeah, it’s all in the way they swing it. ideally, you wouldn’t be able to convert cash to gold. though I could see being able to buy items would be beneficial to some. the only thing they should NEVER do is make it so that some items (from the shop shop) give certain players an advantage. that’s the F2P conspiracy.
Are you kidding me! I can varley make enuff gold! How come everywon is making it rich exept for me how????!!!!
why, in my day you had to spend a ton of gold to get flight, motorcycles, and stuff like that! I made it rich by absolute luck!
first I sold mining mats in WOTLK just before they “buffed” mining, which dropped all prices in the AH. got enough for my motobike!
then I ended up getting some special rare item of some kind, like from the brewfest thing I think, and sold it for a ridiculous amount of gold. I didn’t even offer it! someone in my group offered to buy it for a thousand or so g!
lastly I made a killing off of selling bullets (the purple ones… back when hunters used bullets… remember those days?). but I undercut the market! so I was the walmart of bullets! sold TONS of em! made a fortune until, ya know… they “buffed” hunters. jerks. lol!
but yeah, playing the AH is one of the better ways of doing it. oh! and skipping ALL quests (for the last expansion of levels), grinding or dungeoning, then go back at max lvl and redoing all the quests! you get a lot of gold that way!
That and another reason is why i quit wow
the other reason is that even thoue i reforged everything i had good talents and was doing at least 1 instance and a battleground per day and a rotation i still had a crappy dps and on my first raid ever (icc at 85) for the last 2 instances i was forced to LITERLY stand in the fire (or in this case frost) it seemed that know matter how hard i tried no matter how long i farmed i just was pennyless AND a crappy player
Oh and by the way wow is now free to play up to level 20! ( i was thinking if trying healing but when i tried to log in it said my account expired i WAS. gonna reactivate it but then i thought FUCK IT i can play star wars the old republic)
I was also thinking of joiming a new guild on a diffrent server but i decided not to when my account expired
I know im sounding complany but i really dont have anyone to talk to about wow and well……mmmmmmm…….ya
hmm… not sure about all that reforging bizz… haven’t gotten that far yet. lol!
I wonder if SWTOR will have a demo or trial… kinda interested in seeing how it goes. of course, I’d be on the dark side. XD
i hope its a free to play.
ha! SWTOR will totally not be F2P! they’ve not revealed the monthly cost, but you can preorder the game now with 30 day game time (like wow). costs $60 too!
I signed up for the beta(?) or whatever so hopefully I can try it out. don’t know about any trials though. but I really want to try out a sith sorcerer!
still… try out champions, think you’ll be amused. >D
The main problem with selling in-game gold for money (and especially vice versa) is that eventually, politicians are going to start taxing you. You’ll have to fill out how much gold you earned this year, and pay a certain amount to the IRS. Won’t that be fun in a video game, where you’re often trying to escape that kind of crap? Combined with the low taxes on the gaming industry, the chances of this happening continue to rise. When the government has a hard time pegging companies because of their political power, they tend to go after the consumers instead.
hmm… will the politicians make mini politician NPCs in the game to tax us gold as well? XD
you know, I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re right! we would have to report our earnings from the sales of virtual goods! hmm, wonder if we’d get W-2s from Blizzard every year…