Granted, they don't need to make even more profit; I can't blame them for it. But I think they are going overboard and losing a very loyal fan base.
They aren't losing any fanbase. No matter design decisions they make there will be always be some hardcore contingent that complains and/or quits. Mostly people threaten to quit, but don't. The vast majority of players don't even realize these kinds of issues or think about these things this deeply. They just happily click on monsters all de do da day.
Granted, they don't need to make even more profit; I can't blame them for it. But I think they are going overboard and losing a very loyal fan base.
They aren't losing any fanbase. No matter design decisions they make there will be always be some hardcore contingent that complains and/or quits. Mostly people threaten to quit, but don't. The vast majority of players don't even realize these kinds of issues or think about these things this deeply. They just happily click on monsters all de do da day.
Even without the EULA, the argument could be made that you're not actually "trading" anything... since they're just switching a couple bits about which inventory slots out of all the inventory slots possesses a thing. That's another part I'm curious about... and don't expect to see solved quite yet.
Your bank account is also effectively just "bits in a database"; that argument doesn't hold up at all. Basically, you're paying money for something that you have the ability to resell, though perhaps under some discretion from Blizzard. Moreover, it's a reasonably fluid form of currency, and it could even be used for things like money laundering.
One particular stance government(s) could take is to decide that Diablo III falls under gambling regulation, which there is reasonable support for. Taxation could also apply, though this would likely occur at the point of conversion via Paypal.
There is also some precedent for not letting developers get away with everything they like with respect to RMT -
However, Second Life has shown a legal example which may indicate that the developer can be in part held responsible for such losses. Second Life at one stage, offered and advertised the ability to "own virtual land", which was purchased for real money. In 2007, Marc Bragg, an attorney, was banned from Second Life; in response he sued the developers for thereby depriving him of his land, which he – based on the developers' own statements – "owned". The lawsuit ended with a settlement in which Bragg was re-admitted to Second Life. The details of the final settlement were not released, but the word "own" was removed from all advertising as a result. (It should be noted that Bragg purchased his land directly from the developers, and thus they were not an uninvolved third party in his transactions.)
The mitigating factors I mentioned above were not present here, however.
I don't think they actually have a valid reason for it except to make money.
I think the way they rationalize it to themselves it is that if they don't make the money, then Chinese gold farmers will make the money. And them making money is better, safer, and more reliable than players sending their money to shady places.
The problem with this argument is that Blizzard doesn't have to make money from an official trading system.
I do think that trading is an integral component of this type of game; indeed, the virtual economics is invariably the most interesting and complex aspect of this type of game. It is also pretty much inevitable that if there is virtual trade, real money trade will go with it. As such, I'm not particularly bothered by the presence of an official real money trading system.
However, it is worrying when the developer has a direct stake in the system. Another significant concern is one of insider trading - Blizzard employees could easily exploit their foreknowledge of patch details to make money.
I just thought of an interesting way to make an economy that might not be awful.
What if there were such a game that implemented true scarcity. There are these many gold pieces in the world, and that's it. Ok, you can mine more gold and mint more doubloons, but there are only so many mines, and they have a set amount of gold in them that will never increase. That really awesome epic sword? Yeah, there's only one of them. If one guy has it, nobody else has it. Blacksmith just sold out of boring old short swords. There's only so much steel in this virtual world. That rich guy just melted a bunch down for some full plate, so good luck getting any for you.
Obviously the actual amounts in the world would be quite large, to be appropriate to the number of players, but in such a system a lot of this nonsense would no longer be nonsense.
I just thought of an interesting way to make an economy that might not be awful.
What if there were such a game that implemented true scarcity. There are these many gold pieces in the world, and that's it. Ok, you can mine more gold and mint more doubloons, but there are only so many mines, and they have a set amount of gold in them that will never increase. That really awesome epic sword? Yeah, there's only one of them. If one guy has it, nobody else has it. Blacksmith just sold out of boring old short swords. There's only so much steel in this virtual world. That rich guy just melted a bunch down for some full plate, so good luck getting any for you.
Obviously the actual amounts in the world would be quite large, to be appropriate to the number of players, but in such a system a lot of this nonsense would no longer be nonsense.
It would end up like art collection, and real money would be the only useful currency.
I just thought of an interesting way to make an economy that might not be awful.
You should clarify what you mean by "awful" and the reasons that this is the case.
It's an economy where one party has complete manual control over not just the supply of all things, but the nature of all things. They have basically constructed it so that your wealth in that economy is proportional to the amount of time you spend playing their game and the amount of real world money you give to them. I do not want to do either of those things.
I just thought of an interesting way to make an economy that might not be awful.
You should clarify what you mean by "awful" and the reasons that this is the case.
It's an economy where one party has complete manual control over not just the supply of all things, but the nature of all things. They have basically constructed it so that your wealth in that economy is proportional to the amount of time you spend playing their game and the amount of real world money you give to them. I do not want to do either of those things.
That's not entirely true even in a Diablo III-like market, but I do agree with the general idea. Your proposal of scarcity would help somewhat with this, but it would still boil down to time - it's just that the time would have to be spent in the early days of the game.
What you want requires at least one of these two things: 1) Ability for items to be taken off other players (likely through a PvP mechanism in which you can gang up against them) 2) The possibility for items to be destroyed.
I just thought of an interesting way to make an economy that might not be awful.
You should clarify what you mean by "awful" and the reasons that this is the case.
It's an economy where one party has complete manual control over not just the supply of all things, but the nature of all things. They have basically constructed it so that your wealth in that economy is proportional to the amount of time you spend playing their game and the amount of real world money you give to them. I do not want to do either of those things.
That's not entirely true even in a Diablo III-like market, but I do agree with the general idea. Your proposal of scarcity would help somewhat with this, but it would still boil down to time - it's just that the time would have to be spent in the early days of the game.
What you want requires at least one of these two things: 1) Ability for items to be taken off other players (likely through a PvP mechanism in which you can gang up against them) 2) The possibility for items to be destroyed.
Oh, that's good. Also, dead players = loot lying on the ground.
Also, you guys are assuming that because there is scarcity that everything will be gobbled up early on. Here are some ways to prevent that.
1) There is initially a LOT of stuff. I'm talking almost as much as on real earth. if you take all the gold on earth and melt it into one pure cube, it would only be 1-2 miles per side. Lots and lots of people have gold. The first guy with a gold mine doesn't have all the gold.
2) Encumberment. You can only carry so much. Got a zillion gold, good luck carrying it! You know how much gold weighs?
3) Storage. Ok, so you killed a dragon and found its hoard. Not only can you not carry it all, how can you secure it all? Even if you moved it to another location, you'll just be robbed! In fact, adventurers are coming down the, now empty, dungeon right now to grab some free treasure. Your best hope is to hope the location remains secret, which is plausible for a limited time if the world is large enough.
This sounds more like a design for an exploration based MMO than a Diablo style game. Eve + scarcity (which does exist, to a limited degree).
I thought about Eve, but I don't think it has actual scarcity. You can always find some asteroid to mine, right? I'm sure there are pretty much infinity space rocks, and they will generate more if they run out.
Scarcity wasn't the status quo in eve, especially not for basic resources. But there were a limited number of alien titan things IIRC, and getting at them required more resources than all but the top groups could manage.
Even though the RMAH is suppose to be the answer to black market china farmers, it's actually promoting it. Because it is built into the game, the market for item buyers is magnitudes larger and so are the profits. Here is an interview with a chinese gold farmer. This one guy alone (out of many others) has over 100 accounts with bots on them running 24/7 farming gold and items for the RMAH. They also use shady methods to steal people's account info. It won't take long before massive inflation and anyone who doesn't spend cash for gold wont be able to buy anything at all.
Even now the prices are ridiculous. Any decent item on the gold auction house has is at least 2M gold, with weapons being over 50M. I've logged over 50 hours and only have 3.5M. Getting more gold requires farming the same level over and over...
I have two pieces of gear that I use that dropped for me and were not traded for gold, a chestpiece and a really sweet quiver (that would go for ~8 million gold right now).
I have two pieces of gear that I use that dropped for me and were not traded for gold, a chestpiece and a really sweet quiver (that would go for ~8 million gold right now).
Lucky. Where did you find them? Inferno?
If Blizzard just refined the item generation, I think things would be better: instead of crappy values of Str, Int, and Dex all on one item, have items with weighted combos: High Int w/ Arcane buffs, or High Str with Armor... etc. The class specific items are supposed to be like that, but I can't count the number of Wands or Wizard Hats I've gotten that would be better for a DH or Barbarian, stat wise.
I only pick up blue and better, and usually there is only one item per full inventory that is worth even considering for use because of appropriate class stats and multiple buffs. There is a stupid amount of INT spam going on.
Act 2 inferno, post-patch. It's a level 62 15% AS, 10 max disc, 75 dex, socket, something something. If the dex were higher or it had a second class specific stat it would be worth quite a bit.
Act 2 inferno, post-patch. It's a level 62 15% AS, 10 max disc, 75 dex, socket, something something. If the dex were higher or it had a second class specific stat it would be worth quite a bit.
I tried to tell my people inside Blizzard for a long time it was a silly idea. They just didn't listen. Now all they need to do is acknowledge I was correct and give me a damned designer spot...
I'm still somewhat tempted to pick up Diablo III when it's cheaper on the ps3. I'd probably be willing to pay around $15-20 for it eventually.
From what I have seen the game seems better as a sit down and hang out as opposed to a super hardcore crunch. I'd be at least more willing to play with friends on the sofa then online.
Comments
One particular stance government(s) could take is to decide that Diablo III falls under gambling regulation, which there is reasonable support for. Taxation could also apply, though this would likely occur at the point of conversion via Paypal.
There is also some precedent for not letting developers get away with everything they like with respect to RMT - The mitigating factors I mentioned above were not present here, however.
I do think that trading is an integral component of this type of game; indeed, the virtual economics is invariably the most interesting and complex aspect of this type of game. It is also pretty much inevitable that if there is virtual trade, real money trade will go with it. As such, I'm not particularly bothered by the presence of an official real money trading system.
However, it is worrying when the developer has a direct stake in the system. Another significant concern is one of insider trading - Blizzard employees could easily exploit their foreknowledge of patch details to make money.
What if there were such a game that implemented true scarcity. There are these many gold pieces in the world, and that's it. Ok, you can mine more gold and mint more doubloons, but there are only so many mines, and they have a set amount of gold in them that will never increase. That really awesome epic sword? Yeah, there's only one of them. If one guy has it, nobody else has it. Blacksmith just sold out of boring old short swords. There's only so much steel in this virtual world. That rich guy just melted a bunch down for some full plate, so good luck getting any for you.
Obviously the actual amounts in the world would be quite large, to be appropriate to the number of players, but in such a system a lot of this nonsense would no longer be nonsense.
That WOULD in fact be incredibly fun when it happened... but doesn't seem likely.
Your proposal of scarcity would help somewhat with this, but it would still boil down to time - it's just that the time would have to be spent in the early days of the game.
What you want requires at least one of these two things:
1) Ability for items to be taken off other players (likely through a PvP mechanism in which you can gang up against them)
2) The possibility for items to be destroyed.
Also, you guys are assuming that because there is scarcity that everything will be gobbled up early on. Here are some ways to prevent that.
1) There is initially a LOT of stuff. I'm talking almost as much as on real earth. if you take all the gold on earth and melt it into one pure cube, it would only be 1-2 miles per side. Lots and lots of people have gold. The first guy with a gold mine doesn't have all the gold.
2) Encumberment. You can only carry so much. Got a zillion gold, good luck carrying it! You know how much gold weighs?
3) Storage. Ok, so you killed a dragon and found its hoard. Not only can you not carry it all, how can you secure it all? Even if you moved it to another location, you'll just be robbed! In fact, adventurers are coming down the, now empty, dungeon right now to grab some free treasure. Your best hope is to hope the location remains secret, which is plausible for a limited time if the world is large enough.
If you have stuff being created and destroyed at equal rates, it's pretty much equivalent to scarcity.
Even now the prices are ridiculous. Any decent item on the gold auction house has is at least 2M gold, with weapons being over 50M. I've logged over 50 hours and only have 3.5M. Getting more gold requires farming the same level over and over...
If Blizzard just refined the item generation, I think things would be better: instead of crappy values of Str, Int, and Dex all on one item, have items with weighted combos: High Int w/ Arcane buffs, or High Str with Armor... etc. The class specific items are supposed to be like that, but I can't count the number of Wands or Wizard Hats I've gotten that would be better for a DH or Barbarian, stat wise.
Hyperinflation is definitely to be expected, though.