Diablo III Auctions Detailed

Blizzard announces a new Global Play functionality for Battle.net to allow Diablo III players to play on servers in different regions. They also announce a new Auction House Website for the action/RPG as home to the in-game auction functionality in the action/RPG sequel. This FAQ has all the details, including how the house rake will work:
In the gold-based auction house, a 15% transaction fee will be deducted from the final sale price of a successful auction.

In the real-money auction-house, for equipment such as weapons and armor, a fixed transaction fee will be deducted from the seller for each piece of equipment successfully sold. This fee is assessed only if the item is sold. For commodities such as crafting materials, gems, gold, and other “stackable” items, a 15% transaction fee will be deducted from the total sale price.
[…]
Note that additional fees apply for players who choose to receive the proceeds of their successful auction via PayPal™ (in regions where this option is available). See the Functionality section of this FAQ for further details.
View : : :
50.
 
Re: Diablo III Auctions Detailed
May 2, 2012, 02:38
50.
Re: Diablo III Auctions Detailed May 2, 2012, 02:38
May 2, 2012, 02:38
 
AnointedSword wrote on May 1, 2012, 21:21:
...
The argument about not paying money for pixels is getting old as well. You pay real money to play pixels, don't you?

I'm thinking that this is one of the goofiest statements of belief I've ever heard...;) I don't think that arguments urging people not to become fools will ever get old. But that's just me, and I do realize that as a comparative proportion of society, the "fool quotient" has grown by leaps and bounds in the last few years.

It's remarkable this idiotic idea is even being discussed let alone implemented. Is Blizzard trying to ruin the launch of Diablo III with this kind of off game-topic buzz? Maybe, though, the real situation is that the game is pretty darn bad--and Blizzard knows it--and anything goes in the Diablo III game experience that serves the purpose of helping people forget about the how supremely rotten the game itself actually is. Is this the old "Dazzle 'Em with B***Sh**!" ploy with a new coat of paint? Heh...;) Sure looks like it, Blizzard!

Traditionally, within a computer game, players may buy and sell virtual items for virtual money if the game is the type that provides it and if the players wish to spend time doing it. It's been that way like, forever...;) Mentally healthy people can enjoy fiction to the utmost without getting it hopelessly confused with real life in the slightest. It's the real nutters who read a Superman comic book one too many times and then get killed trying to fly off a bridge because they had come to believe that not only was Superman real, but that *they* were, in fact, Superman himself. Likewise, only real nutters would pay real money, over and above the price of the game, for virtual items that do not exist as real objects in the real world--and only have an existence as collections of pixels on the 2d screens of Diablo III (Yes I know it is a "3d" game--and I don't mean the horrible psuedo-3d glasses effect!--but still, even today we are all constrained to 2d monitors.)

Next thing you know, some people will actually be buying programs that sell virtual iPhones for real $50 prices that are "fully operational" on-screen via a mouse and keyboard or *shudder* an xBox controller or GAAA_A_A_A!-a Touch Screen "that lets you touch the virtual touch-screen iPhone you now proudly own!" (Cue the men with the butterfly nets! Action! Roll'em!)

You can spend hours of blissful joy having fake cell-phone conversations with fictitious people from all over the world whose voices and syntax and languages and accents have been very cleverly compiled into recordings by dozens of skilled voice actors! Via a touch screen you "can hold the virtual iPhone in your virtual hand"--just like a real iPhone! With your fingertips you can mash the colorful fake buttons on the screen and your virtual iPhone will "go online" or use "Google Maps" (using very clever pre-compiled animations, of course, since your 4g LTE virtual iPhone network is virtual, too), or you can manipulate your virtual iPhone to make lots of spiffy tech-sounding noises and flash beautiful colored lights--just like the real iPhone does! Yea, baby! What an awesome virtual deal for just $50 real dollars and NO DATA CAPS and NO MONTHLY FEES!! (But that's only because, of course, the "virtual iPhone simulator" is just a virtual object with virtual functionality that doesn't really do anything at all in the real world--except of course separating you from your real $50.)

Back to Blizzard. Blizzard *says* it is going to have TWO, count 'em, two, "Auction Houses" inside the Diablo III game. One of them will sell fake game items for real money; the other one will sell fake game items for fake, in-game virtual money (gold, etc.) The unstable nutballs will quickly migrate to the Auction House selling fake items for real money, and the mentally healthy Diablo III players will do as they always do when playing games like Diablo III--they will buy and sell virtual game items in the in-game stores that deal only in virtual money, or they will collect their gold, buy and sell their fake game items as it suits them, and then they will either participate in the "virtual items for virtual money Auction house," or they will skip it altogether and just *play the game* as it was *originally* intended to be played...;)

And, no, AnointedSore, (sp?) when people buy computer games they are *not* paying for collections of dumb, pixelated virtual objects of all kinds that allow the purchaser to do *nothing* with them except look at them on a computer screen and rotate them and fake-use them, etc. That's *the* most dumbed-down definition of a computer game I think I've ever heard...;) Games like that would sell about as well as the fake iPhone simulator I describe above, and be about as much fun, too.

What people are buying when they buy a virtual computer game of some kind, AnointedSpore, with *real* money, is an interactive *story* of some kind--with a plot, a beginning, an end; a story with fictional characters, hopefully some depth, and hopefully a lot of entertainment along the way. Or else they are buying a "frag-everything" FPS. Buying a computer game with real money is not too different from buying a book or a movie with real money--except the computer game (if it's decent) is probably a lot more entertaining and a lot better buy for the buck in that you get many more hours of entertainment out of it...;)

If you can think of a single computer game ever made which does nothing except auction off virtual (fake!, as in not only do these objects do nothing in the real world, they don't even *exist* in the real world!) items for *real money* (and real money, of course, is both functional and it exists in the real world)? Maybe there has been a game like that in the past--but I've been gaming for 26 years and I've never heard of it if it exists--which tells me that if it existed at all it was not popular enough to rise above background noise. And I can understand why.

Back to Blizzard again. Why does Diablo 3 need two player auction houses, one of whom will attempt to peddle virtual *Diablo 3* objects for real money, money that Blizzard is planning to take for itself to the tune of 15% +; while the other is strictly virtual Diablo 3 goods for virtual money, of which Blizzard bothers, for some reason, to take a *virtual 15% cut*?

But that's not the real question that begs asking--it isn't a question of "Why two auction houses?"--It's a question of "Why even One?" auction house of any kind is needed in Blizzard's Diablo 3? When I think of Diablo 3, as I have been doing off and on now for awhile, this is a concept (player auction houses) that has never crossed my mind before reading this announcement today.

Then there's the "Global Play" stuff, too--again, which doesn't interest me at all when I think of Diablo 3. I hope I'm wrong, but these announcements seem like very rushed efforts to inject more "content" into a game that Blizzard thinks is too short, too shallow, and generally below expectations--just in order to try and keep people interested longer and playing longer.

I just finished the FAQ, and the truly goofiest statement Blizzard makes in all of this is that "lucky" players are going to be able to buy virtual gold in the game with *real* money--at an "exchange rate" which fluctuates according to some kind of scale that apparently the players at the fake-goods-for-real-money auction house are going to regulate.

According to Blizzard, all of this is happening because Diablo has always been chiefly been about accumulating in-game goods. Gee, and here I was thinking *SINGLE-PLAYER* like the Diablo's of old and that *THE EVIL IS BACK* meaning that there was some kind of good vs. evil *story* going on here, which unfolds as the player progresses through the game. But Blizzard says I must be wrong about that--because Blizzard says it's like this: The item-based nature of Diablo gameplay has always lent itself to an active trade-based ecosystem, and a significant part of this trade has been conducted through unsecure third-party organizations. And to think I played Diablo I & II for years and enjoyed them quite a bit, especially D2, and never once heard of or used an "unsecure third-party organization" for anything at all--most especially for the truly idiotic adventure of buying virtual Diablo goods for real money.

I think this game will likely disappoint me in a very big way--but I can still hope otherwise. We'll see. This looks so much like a Herculean cash grab by Blizzard that the resulting whiteout is giving me a splitting headache.







This comment was edited on May 2, 2012, 02:48.
It is well known that I cannot err--and so, if you should happen across an error in anything I have written you can be absolutely sure that *I* did not write it!...;)
Avatar 16008
Date
Subject
Author
1.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
2.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
18.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
21.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
15.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
3.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
7.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
13.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
17.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
19.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
20.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
22.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
62.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
33.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
34.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
47.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
57.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
58.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
59.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
68.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
69.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
71.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
70.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
81.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
82.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
84.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
101.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
102.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
103.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
105.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
106.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
           Re: Diablo III Auctions Detailed
107.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
            Re: Diablo III Auctions Detailed
112.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
           Re: Diablo III Auctions Detailed
114.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
            Re: Diablo III Auctions Detailed
108.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
111.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
8.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
9.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
 50.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
 Re: Diablo III Auctions Detailed
51.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
4.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
6.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
10.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
12.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
14.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
28.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
30.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
32.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
53.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
37.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
83.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
85.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
93.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
97.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
99.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
89.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
91.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
92.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
94.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
95.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
98.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
100.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
11.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
16.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
23.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
25.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
26.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
36.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
41.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
52.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
96.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
24.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
31.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
27.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
29.
May 1, 2012May 1 2012
38.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
42.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
55.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
64.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
76.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
77.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
39.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
40.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
72.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
74.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
75.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
78.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
79.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
80.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
88.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
90.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
104.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
43.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
46.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
49.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
44.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
45.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
66.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
48.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
54.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
56.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
60.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
61.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
65.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
67.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
73.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
86.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
87.
May 2, 2012May 2 2012
109.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
116.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
118.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
119.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
120.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
121.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
122.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
123.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
124.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
      removed
127.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
128.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
129.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
133.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
135.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
137.
May 4, 2012May 4 2012
138.
May 4, 2012May 4 2012
139.
May 4, 2012May 4 2012
145.
May 5, 2012May 5 2012
146.
May 6, 2012May 6 2012
147.
May 6, 2012May 6 2012
148.
May 6, 2012May 6 2012
150.
May 6, 2012May 6 2012
151.
May 6, 2012May 6 2012
        removed
152.
May 6, 2012May 6 2012
154.
May 7, 2012May 7 2012
125.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
126.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
110.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
113.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
115.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
130.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
131.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
132.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
134.
May 3, 2012May 3 2012
136.
May 4, 2012May 4 2012
141.
May 4, 2012May 4 2012
142.
May 4, 2012May 4 2012
143.
May 4, 2012May 4 2012
144.
May 5, 2012May 5 2012
140.
May 4, 2012May 4 2012
149.
May 6, 2012May 6 2012
153.
May 7, 2012May 7 2012
155.
May 7, 2012May 7 2012
156.
May 7, 2012May 7 2012
157.
May 7, 2012May 7 2012