If you honestly have to think about whether or not to cast the fire spell on the ice monster, as opposed to the ice spell, then these games are clearly up your alley. ;^)
Well, I wasn't really taking Scott's example directly; you could pull a better one out, but I have to say that the way I (and, I think, I am not alone here) interpret the term "tactics", a game consisting solely of tactics is likely not one I'd play... Some things that are completely straightforward are often still called tactics; the page on chess tactics corroborates such a meaning.
In case you haven't heard it there is interesting Diablo III news: 1) Game cannot be played offline, it can only be played while player is constantly connected to the internet. 2) Mods are prohibited. 3) There will be an in-game auction house where players can buy items from other players using in-game currency or real world currency.
In the news bits I've seen they've tried to explain away #1 as a player ease of use thing. Saying that if you'd played offline they couldn't let you take that character online because they couldn't guarantee you hadn't used a mod or cheated, so if you wanted to play online you'd have to make a new character and start from scratch. But really #1 exists for two reason: to prevent piracy, and because of #3. Additionally mods being prohibited also exists because of #3, because they need to make sure that players are not cheating to make fake items, or to farm really good items to sell in the store, so they can make money.
Now what they should be doing is letting you play offline, but not being able to port that character over to online, and throwing up a lot of warnings saying that you aren't able to use any of the online features, blah blah blah.
Now I guess I'll get to the big one, which is #3. Which I don't see as a bad thing at all, because (how soon we forget) Diablo II had a black market on eBay where players sold items for real money, and you couldn't exactly guarantee that you would either get the item you bought, or if it wasn't just created by the seller using a hack. So what they are doing is taking something that existed, legitimizing it and controlling it so that the average player can use it (and not have to worry about getting cheat out of their money, or getting a fake item.)
Blizzard is also going to be taking a little bit on each transaction (which eBay/Paypal would be doing too,) but my hope is that with this alternate revenue source that perhaps they will release the game for like $40 or less (I think $20 would be ideal,) but I wouldn't hold my breath on that.
Dear Runic Games: Please make Torchlight 2 just a tad scarier and a little less cartoonish, then give it a nice gothic gloss. Then you can replace Diablo altogether. I will give you moneys.
Which I don't see as a bad thing at all, because (how soon we forget) Diablo II had a black market on eBay where players sold items for real money, and you couldn't exactly guarantee that you would either get the item you bought, or if it wasn't just created by the seller using a hack. So what they are doing is taking something that existed, legitimizing it and controlling it so that the average player can use it (and not have to worry about getting cheat out of their money, or getting a fake item.)
Also goldfarmers can now flood the market selling their gear cheaper than ever. If they were going to do something, they should have just had an official gold selling service instead.
I predict Torchlight 2 will probably do as well as Diablo III simply because it won't have that kind of bullshit in it.
How exactly is it bullshit? It's not like you have to use the auction house, and it's not like you can only spend real money in the auction house. Additionally it is first and foremost a single player/co-operative game, so it's not like it will somehow ruin the competitive balance of the single player game.
How exactly is it bullshit? It's not like you have to use the auction house, and it's not like you can only spend real money in the auction house. Additionally it is first and foremost a single player/co-operative game, so it's not like it will somehow ruin the competitive balance of the single player game.
Imagine going to the store to buy a sudoku puzzle book. There's a guy standing there who will solve half of every puzzle for you for $5. That's some fucked up shit right there.
Now it gets even crazier. You buy a big sudoku book, and you and your friend are going to work on it together during your long road trip. He pays an extra $10, and now his half of the book is already solved. WTF?
Now you see some other guy with no job. He buys the sudoku book, solves the whole thing with extreme time and effort. Then he sells the already completed puzzle book to someone else for $50! Then the company that makes the books takes a cut and he's left with $40!
That kind of environment changes the psychology of everyone involved. Everyone ends up in a fucked up crazy land where nothing makes sense. I'll be really interested to see how the player community behaves over time compared to Torchlight community.
And all that is for some games where all you do is click repeatedly on monsters as numbers go up. There's even less going on in Diablo than in WoW. I can't even imagine a game where you do less other than Progress Quest. At least the other games where you walk around and hit things might have some action elements, like Bastion with it's timed blocking, or Magicka with its creative spell casting and humor.
I'm just waiting for some game company to actually release a skinner box without any disguise on it. It will just be a vending machine. You put in a dollar and a random candy comes out. Come on Jolly Rancher!
Scott, your analogies are a little weird. Regardless while I agree that from a game balance/design stand point it's completely nutso bonkers. However I think that there is something to be said for what the player wants to do. If a person doesn't have time to level up their character to level 100, and get all the gear, but they want to experience that part of the game should we say "No, you didn't put in the time like everyone else did." Or do you come up with a way to let them play that part of the game.
While initially I was more on the side of they should put in their time like everyone else, as I've actually started to make games, I've begun to shift the other way. Why punish someone who wants to play your game, but doesn't have the time to? Granted that using real money is perhaps not the most elegant solution to this, but I think it's intent is try to prevent too much abuse of the system by tying it to a real cost to the player. Such that only those who don't wish to put in the time can spend money to accomplish the same thing.
League of Legends does this rather well, where you can purchase new characters for you to be able to play as. You can purchase them either with real money, or by playing the game you earn in game currency that you can use to unlock them.
If a person doesn't have time to level up their character to level 100, and get all the gear, but they want to experience that part of the game should we say "No, you didn't put in the time like everyone else did." Or do you come up with a way to let them play that part of the game.
Paying to get items isn't playing the game at all. Why do they even get the game if they don't have time (or will) to actually play it?
EDIT: Also, doesn't this make Diabo III officially online gambling? Tying real world value to stochastic based functions (item drops) makes Diablo III a themed casino.
If a person doesn't have time to level up their character to level 100, and get all the gear, but they want to experience that part of the game should we say "No, you didn't put in the time like everyone else did." Or do you come up with a way to let them play that part of the game.
Paying to get items isn't playing the game at all. Why do they even get the game if they don't have time (or will) to actually play it?
Why does it matter? If someone wants to pay money rather then spend time, and them doing that has absolutely no effect on anyone else's experience playing the game, then what's the problem?
Perhaps they shouldn't be buying the game in the first place, but they have, and maybe we should accommodate them so that maybe the next time they buy a game maybe they put in the time. Instead of scaring them off by making the barrier to entry for them (seemingly) too high.
Why does it matter? If someone wants to pay money rather then spend time, and them doing that has absolutely no effect on anyone else's experience playing the game, then what's the problem?
Because it eventually effects the players who don't want to spend for items. Drops will be balanced in different ways, they aren't going to be able to reset ladders because "ZOMG they got rid of my $20 character", and eventually certain items will only be available for those who pay. It's nice to say this money system won't effect those who don't want to pay, but I have yet to see it actually come true.
I don't like real money transactions in games that are not free to play. The game is also going to have some kind of pvp ranked mode which means I hope you are ready to spend some cash to be the best.
If you want to make the most moneys possible, absolutely do what Blizzard is doing. There is no question they are maximizing profits.
You do bring up a good point though. Someone paid for your game. Let's say you don't want to be an asshole and charge them real money for items, DLC, etc. They paid for a game, they should have a right to experience the entire game that they paid for, regardless of their time investment. What do you do? If it's a multiplayer game it would be unfair to give out advantages to different players. But in a single player game, what does it matter?
What does it matter indeed. If I buy a DVD I can skip to the end and watch the last five minutes. If I buy a book, I can read the words in any order. Nothing at all forces me to experience it in any particular order. So why don't single player video games, where it doesn't fucking matter, let you cheat? Civilization 2 let you cheat. It had a cheat menu, but your final score didn't count if you used it. Everyone could experience the entire game with minimal time investment. You could see every wonder video and use every unit no matter your skill level. Doom and Doom 2 also let you cheat. Even if you sucked and couldn't take out a cacodemon with a shotgun, you could still see the entire game with god mode, all weapons, unlimited ammo. You could even see every secret in the game with IDCLIP. What was wrong with that in a single player game? Even Valve has sv_cheat if you want to use it when VAC is not in effect.
What if in a purely single player game, such as Bastion (on my mind since I just beat it), everything was unlocked from the get go? I had the option to go through the game normally if I so desired, but I also had the option to cheat. I could set my level to any level. I could get all the items immediately. I could turn on invincible mode. I could go to any stage in any order, and watch any part of the plot. What would be the harm in that? It would take relatively little development effort. I paid for the game. It's not multiplayer, so why can't I play it how I want? Why don't single player JRPGs let me turn off the random encounters? It's a single player game.
Sudoku books were my example because they have solution tables in the back. It's stupid to pay someone to solve them for you because you can just look in the back. The point is that you are then just cheating yourself. But how many people who buy Sudoku books actually just copy from the back to the front without trying to solve the puzzles? I'm sure some might get a hint or two when the going gets tough, but I imagine most do the puzzles legitimately or not at all. Yet, a puzzle book that charged an extra fee for the solutions would be very unpopular. You need those to check to make sure your solution is correct. After I beat a game legitimately, I might want to beat it again while cheating to quickly see all the secrets I missed.
How about Nintendo with their Donkey Kong auto-win thing? Remember that? It was quite controversial when it first came out. If someone uses that you would definitely look down on them, just as you look down on someone who just copies from the back of the puzzle book. That doesn't mean it's wrong for that to be an option.
Also, if more games did this, GameFAQs would disappear.
Paying to get items isn't playing the game at all. Why do they even get the game if they don't have time (or will) to actually play it?
I would have asked the same question until about 3 years when when i began working at Blizzard. Now, please do not tie anything I say here to Blizzard. This is all personal opinion.
There is a subset of gamer who wants to have the best gear at *any* cost. Be it paying some Chinese gold farmer/item seller, building a bot to "grind" for you, having a family member play your account for you, the list goes on. Those people exist. As much as I personally loathe the microtransaction model, I'm slowly coming to accept is powers as both a lure for players into your game and a money maker for companies. All any company with microtransactions is doing is opening up a revenue stream and illegitimizing the assholes who want to ride for free.
What I don't agree with is some other "company" riding coat tails of others work (a la WoW gold sellers) to create their own "industry". That's equivalent to what Scott has said about phone apps. Do something cool and the makers of the device crush your app and then incorporate it into the device as basic UI. I think the die is cast with WoW. I don't see the companies stance on real world currencies for in game items changing. Moving forward, though? Why not. More money for us, better experiences for the customers who are willing to pay. I'm not so myopic as so say these things shouldn't exist. It's clear they do and aren't going away. Why not enjoy the ride and make a lil more profit?
What I don't agree with is some other "company" riding coat tails of others work (a la WoW gold sellers) to create their own "industry". That's equivalent to what Scott has said about phone apps. Do something cool and the makers of the device crush your app and then incorporate it into the device as basic UI. I think the die is cast with WoW. I don't see the companies stance on real world currencies for in game items to change. Moving forward, though? Why not. More money for us, better experiences for the customers who are willing to pay. I'm not so myopic as so say these things shouldn't exist. It's clear they do and aren't going away. Why not enjoy the ride and make a lil more profit?
Going along with the comment I just made. If it's a single player game, and you let people cheat, there would also be no room for gold farmers. How could they sell items to people who could get them just by cheating?
Also, I would like to point out that gold farming only works in games of no skill. If you have a game of skill, like Counter-Strike, what can someone possibly sell you? Blizzard doesn't have these problems in their skill game, which is Starcraft. They only have these problems of gold farming and micro-transactions in their no-skill skinner boxes. It's a game where victory IS time investment. The real real solution is to not make that kind of game in the first place. Of course, then you wouldn't get mad rich, which is their primary goal.
Completely anonymous real money transfer via video game items: Ultimate money laundering system?
It's not anonymous though. Your Battle.net account is tied to a real person. It would also be really hard to make it completely anonymous. At some point you have to put the dirty money into the system, which comes from a bank account or credit card that is not anonymous.
Completely anonymous real money transfer via video game items: Ultimate money laundering system?
It's not anonymous though. Your Battle.net account is tied to a real person. It would also be really hard to make it completely anonymous. At some point you have to put the dirty money into the system, which comes from a bank account or credit card that is not anonymous.
Now that's an idea. If I'm Blizzard I can put a Bitcoin mining program into all my games. Then everyone's CPU will mine coins for ME while they are playing my game. $$$$$$$
Completely anonymous real money transfer via video game items: Ultimate money laundering system?
Known thing. I remember reading about that kinda thing happening with Second Life. This was because, while reading about Second Life currency, I got the idea of money laundering through it, and I quickly found I was not alone in that thought. I don't know how much any of that is actually done.
Completely anonymous real money transfer via video game items: Ultimate money laundering system?
Known thing. I remember reading about that kinda thing happening with Second Life. This was because, while reading about Second Life currency, I got the idea of money laundering through it, and I quickly found I was not alone in that thought. I don't know how much any of that is actually done.
there is also the issue of the value of digital goods and services and what that market consists of. Concerning money laundering if someone sells their MMO character for a million dollars there is little in the way to determine whether that was a clearly fraudulent activity to mask another income or a good that was valued highly by the purchaser. It's largely a system of it's worth what it's sold for and not more or less but differentiating that from fraud is difficult, if not something that at this early stage shouldn't be undertaken. Bringing in legislation and strict precedent to the virtual goods market in this early stage could end up choking a lot of what it could potentially be if left to it's current devices.
Going along with the comment I just made. If it's a single player game, and you let people cheat, there would also be no room for gold farmers. How could they sell items to people who could get them just by cheating?
I never thought I'd have to say this but... I think a game developer is entitled to do what it can to KEEP people from cheating. On your supposition, I agree. Blizzard, as a company, has never abided cheating, even with quotes around it. I understand some developers don't mind that sort of thing but Blizzard has every right to stop that behavior.
Also, I would like to point out that gold farming only works in games of no skill. If you have a game of skill, like Counter-Strike, what can someone possibly sell you? Blizzard doesn't have these problems in their skill game, which is Starcraft. They only have these problems of gold farming and micro-transactions in their no-skill skinner boxes. It's a game where victory IS time investment. The real real solution is to not make that kind of game in the first place. Of course, then you wouldn't get mad rich, which is their primary goal.
Just because you disagree with the circumstances in which the problem arises doesn't change the fact that it's a problem. Diablo 3 will have a degree of skill to it and it will have to deal with account compromises, much in the way WoW accounts do. The parallels between them are numeroues. I'd even go so far as to say D3 will be a better game requiring more skill, but that's a different argument.
I have enough faith in our devs that they will not put into the world of D3 items that are strictly better available only via real world currency. WoW is actually proof to back this up.
Sorry for the short reply but this is being hammered out at work, which is always busy as hell on Mondays.
I knew another player when I was playing WoW that was essentially laundering money into WoW accounts and gold as a way of destroying his net worth so it couldn't be taken from him in a lawsuit. Since the courts in his native country didn't put any real value in those electronic "goods", he was successful... at about a 90% loss rate after everything was said and done.
I also can't help but imagine day-traders hawking Stone of Jordans as the price goes up and down on any given day. Buy low, sell high. Corner the Horadric Cube market. There's a price bubble on perfect skulls!
Combine this with Blizzards already-planned game expansions and the typical neverending changes to loot rules and structure and you've got yourself some real chaos.
I can't imagine how crazy the wow auction house guys are going to get.
All that said, Hardcore mode is appealing to me more and more.
I also can't help but imagine day-traders hawking Stone of Jordans as the price goes up and down on any given day. Buy low, sell high. Corner the Horadric Cube market. There's a price bubble on perfect skulls!
Cory Doctorow wrote that into his novel "For the Win" (Not good, preachy and disorganized) but the concept was interesting. He watched the in game economy using automated systems, used in game money to buy low and sell high, then traded gold for cash on the gray market. Now it wasn't feasible in WOW because Gold trading is A: slow and B: illegal. But in Diablo...
When Final Fantasy 11 was new there was an auction system that is required to use to make any in game money. Low level drops were used as spell components, crafting, ect so they price was consistent and fair. I'd know what low level area to grind in to make quick cash until the PS2 version of the game came out. The influx of new low level players destroyed the market for those drops and they never recovered (As long as I'm playing the game)
Say something dropped by mod X is needed to enchant a ring. But there are few level 11 players left to naturally fight the mob. The players who want to enchant don't care about grinding. If someone watched carefully they could make a lot of money as new players stop coming in and low level drops become rarer. That is, if Diablo even has a system that requires components or crafting materials. Which I doubt.
Did anybody say how they are handling inventory management and looting yet? I'm hoping for some more modern design on both fronts. Diablo was terrible. Diablo 2 was slightly less terrible. Wow was pretty terrible at first, but grudually solved some of its issues (keyrings, unlimited mounts/pets, etc.), but what I'd really prefer is automatic overflow to my bank, stacking of all small common items, and some account-wide storage.
Comments
It had multi-player (online no less) and it came with some sort of voice chat software.
Some things that are completely straightforward are often still called tactics; the page on chess tactics corroborates such a meaning.
1) Game cannot be played offline, it can only be played while player is constantly connected to the internet.
2) Mods are prohibited.
3) There will be an in-game auction house where players can buy items from other players using in-game currency or real world currency.
In the news bits I've seen they've tried to explain away #1 as a player ease of use thing. Saying that if you'd played offline they couldn't let you take that character online because they couldn't guarantee you hadn't used a mod or cheated, so if you wanted to play online you'd have to make a new character and start from scratch. But really #1 exists for two reason: to prevent piracy, and because of #3. Additionally mods being prohibited also exists because of #3, because they need to make sure that players are not cheating to make fake items, or to farm really good items to sell in the store, so they can make money.
Now what they should be doing is letting you play offline, but not being able to port that character over to online, and throwing up a lot of warnings saying that you aren't able to use any of the online features, blah blah blah.
Now I guess I'll get to the big one, which is #3. Which I don't see as a bad thing at all, because (how soon we forget) Diablo II had a black market on eBay where players sold items for real money, and you couldn't exactly guarantee that you would either get the item you bought, or if it wasn't just created by the seller using a hack. So what they are doing is taking something that existed, legitimizing it and controlling it so that the average player can use it (and not have to worry about getting cheat out of their money, or getting a fake item.)
Blizzard is also going to be taking a little bit on each transaction (which eBay/Paypal would be doing too,) but my hope is that with this alternate revenue source that perhaps they will release the game for like $40 or less (I think $20 would be ideal,) but I wouldn't hold my breath on that.
Now it gets even crazier. You buy a big sudoku book, and you and your friend are going to work on it together during your long road trip. He pays an extra $10, and now his half of the book is already solved. WTF?
Now you see some other guy with no job. He buys the sudoku book, solves the whole thing with extreme time and effort. Then he sells the already completed puzzle book to someone else for $50! Then the company that makes the books takes a cut and he's left with $40!
That kind of environment changes the psychology of everyone involved. Everyone ends up in a fucked up crazy land where nothing makes sense. I'll be really interested to see how the player community behaves over time compared to Torchlight community.
And all that is for some games where all you do is click repeatedly on monsters as numbers go up. There's even less going on in Diablo than in WoW. I can't even imagine a game where you do less other than Progress Quest. At least the other games where you walk around and hit things might have some action elements, like Bastion with it's timed blocking, or Magicka with its creative spell casting and humor.
I'm just waiting for some game company to actually release a skinner box without any disguise on it. It will just be a vending machine. You put in a dollar and a random candy comes out. Come on Jolly Rancher!
If I build a car in my backyard I don't have to tell anyone about it unless I sell it or I try to drive it on public roads.
While initially I was more on the side of they should put in their time like everyone else, as I've actually started to make games, I've begun to shift the other way. Why punish someone who wants to play your game, but doesn't have the time to? Granted that using real money is perhaps not the most elegant solution to this, but I think it's intent is try to prevent too much abuse of the system by tying it to a real cost to the player. Such that only those who don't wish to put in the time can spend money to accomplish the same thing.
League of Legends does this rather well, where you can purchase new characters for you to be able to play as. You can purchase them either with real money, or by playing the game you earn in game currency that you can use to unlock them.
EDIT: Also, doesn't this make Diabo III officially online gambling? Tying real world value to stochastic based functions (item drops) makes Diablo III a themed casino.
Perhaps they shouldn't be buying the game in the first place, but they have, and maybe we should accommodate them so that maybe the next time they buy a game maybe they put in the time. Instead of scaring them off by making the barrier to entry for them (seemingly) too high.
You do bring up a good point though. Someone paid for your game. Let's say you don't want to be an asshole and charge them real money for items, DLC, etc. They paid for a game, they should have a right to experience the entire game that they paid for, regardless of their time investment. What do you do? If it's a multiplayer game it would be unfair to give out advantages to different players. But in a single player game, what does it matter?
What does it matter indeed. If I buy a DVD I can skip to the end and watch the last five minutes. If I buy a book, I can read the words in any order. Nothing at all forces me to experience it in any particular order. So why don't single player video games, where it doesn't fucking matter, let you cheat? Civilization 2 let you cheat. It had a cheat menu, but your final score didn't count if you used it. Everyone could experience the entire game with minimal time investment. You could see every wonder video and use every unit no matter your skill level. Doom and Doom 2 also let you cheat. Even if you sucked and couldn't take out a cacodemon with a shotgun, you could still see the entire game with god mode, all weapons, unlimited ammo. You could even see every secret in the game with IDCLIP. What was wrong with that in a single player game? Even Valve has sv_cheat if you want to use it when VAC is not in effect.
What if in a purely single player game, such as Bastion (on my mind since I just beat it), everything was unlocked from the get go? I had the option to go through the game normally if I so desired, but I also had the option to cheat. I could set my level to any level. I could get all the items immediately. I could turn on invincible mode. I could go to any stage in any order, and watch any part of the plot. What would be the harm in that? It would take relatively little development effort. I paid for the game. It's not multiplayer, so why can't I play it how I want? Why don't single player JRPGs let me turn off the random encounters? It's a single player game.
Sudoku books were my example because they have solution tables in the back. It's stupid to pay someone to solve them for you because you can just look in the back. The point is that you are then just cheating yourself. But how many people who buy Sudoku books actually just copy from the back to the front without trying to solve the puzzles? I'm sure some might get a hint or two when the going gets tough, but I imagine most do the puzzles legitimately or not at all. Yet, a puzzle book that charged an extra fee for the solutions would be very unpopular. You need those to check to make sure your solution is correct. After I beat a game legitimately, I might want to beat it again while cheating to quickly see all the secrets I missed.
How about Nintendo with their Donkey Kong auto-win thing? Remember that? It was quite controversial when it first came out. If someone uses that you would definitely look down on them, just as you look down on someone who just copies from the back of the puzzle book. That doesn't mean it's wrong for that to be an option.
Also, if more games did this, GameFAQs would disappear.
There is a subset of gamer who wants to have the best gear at *any* cost. Be it paying some Chinese gold farmer/item seller, building a bot to "grind" for you, having a family member play your account for you, the list goes on. Those people exist. As much as I personally loathe the microtransaction model, I'm slowly coming to accept is powers as both a lure for players into your game and a money maker for companies. All any company with microtransactions is doing is opening up a revenue stream and illegitimizing the assholes who want to ride for free.
What I don't agree with is some other "company" riding coat tails of others work (a la WoW gold sellers) to create their own "industry". That's equivalent to what Scott has said about phone apps. Do something cool and the makers of the device crush your app and then incorporate it into the device as basic UI. I think the die is cast with WoW. I don't see the companies stance on real world currencies for in game items changing. Moving forward, though? Why not. More money for us, better experiences for the customers who are willing to pay. I'm not so myopic as so say these things shouldn't exist. It's clear they do and aren't going away. Why not enjoy the ride and make a lil more profit?
Also, I would like to point out that gold farming only works in games of no skill. If you have a game of skill, like Counter-Strike, what can someone possibly sell you? Blizzard doesn't have these problems in their skill game, which is Starcraft. They only have these problems of gold farming and micro-transactions in their no-skill skinner boxes. It's a game where victory IS time investment. The real real solution is to not make that kind of game in the first place. Of course, then you wouldn't get mad rich, which is their primary goal.
Also, I would like to point out that gold farming only works in games of no skill. If you have a game of skill, like Counter-Strike, what can someone possibly sell you? Blizzard doesn't have these problems in their skill game, which is Starcraft. They only have these problems of gold farming and micro-transactions in their no-skill skinner boxes. It's a game where victory IS time investment. The real real solution is to not make that kind of game in the first place. Of course, then you wouldn't get mad rich, which is their primary goal.
Just because you disagree with the circumstances in which the problem arises doesn't change the fact that it's a problem. Diablo 3 will have a degree of skill to it and it will have to deal with account compromises, much in the way WoW accounts do. The parallels between them are numeroues. I'd even go so far as to say D3 will be a better game requiring more skill, but that's a different argument.
I have enough faith in our devs that they will not put into the world of D3 items that are strictly better available only via real world currency. WoW is actually proof to back this up.
Sorry for the short reply but this is being hammered out at work, which is always busy as hell on Mondays.
I also can't help but imagine day-traders hawking Stone of Jordans as the price goes up and down on any given day. Buy low, sell high. Corner the Horadric Cube market. There's a price bubble on perfect skulls!
Combine this with Blizzards already-planned game expansions and the typical neverending changes to loot rules and structure and you've got yourself some real chaos.
I can't imagine how crazy the wow auction house guys are going to get.
All that said, Hardcore mode is appealing to me more and more.
When Final Fantasy 11 was new there was an auction system that is required to use to make any in game money. Low level drops were used as spell components, crafting, ect so they price was consistent and fair. I'd know what low level area to grind in to make quick cash until the PS2 version of the game came out. The influx of new low level players destroyed the market for those drops and they never recovered (As long as I'm playing the game)
Say something dropped by mod X is needed to enchant a ring. But there are few level 11 players left to naturally fight the mob. The players who want to enchant don't care about grinding. If someone watched carefully they could make a lot of money as new players stop coming in and low level drops become rarer. That is, if Diablo even has a system that requires components or crafting materials. Which I doubt.