Athene Gives Us His Thoughts on Diablo 3′s Real Money Auction House

A very interesting video on what Athene of the legendary YouTube Channel, AtheneWins, thinks about the controversial announcement about Diablo 3′s real money auction house. I for one agree with a lot of his points however we would like to hear your comments about the whole topic below. Our readers seem to be fairly well off in terms of WoW gold compared to the average player while others have 500k gold or are over the gold cap. So the opinions might be a bit biased since we are the ones most likely to succeed in this type of economy where gold (virtual currency) is interchangeable with money (real cash). The interesting thing is that even both auction houses will be separate from each other, the are linked in a way due to how you can actually sell the gold you make from one AH in the real cash one.  With real money on the line, the whole economy will be a lot different from WoW in addition to how loot works in Diablo 3.  Players will have some fierce competition to deal with now. In WoW, only a small percentage of the population care about the gold making gold game beyond providing the bare essentials for their toons. In Diablo 3 expect a larger percentage of players to take the auction house game much more seriously which means more competition and the lowering of prices on items.

Here is a brief explanation on how the loot system worked in Diablo 2 and will continue to work like this in Diablo 3:

If you’re wondering whether Blizzard could take transition this currency-based auction house to WOW, consider the following: Pardo commented that WOW uses a deterministic item system — one where items are handcrafted, and where users can figure out where they tend to drop. WOW caters to “achievers” who seek to build a particular item set. Diablo’s randomly generated items and loot drops makes it better suited to this merchant economy — Pardo says you can go up against Diablo 10,000 times, and not get any of the same drops again like in WOW. With him taking the time to explain why this auction house works for Diablo rather than WOW, it seems safe to conclude that it won’t migrate over to WOW either. (Source)

There are other reasons for Blizzard to enable such a feature. Diablo 3, says Pardo, doesn’t work the same way that a game like World of Warcraft does. World of Warcraft’s loot is deterministic, dependent mostly on skill, progression, and time spent playing. Diablo’s loot, on the other hand, is random — while some items are tied to some areas, there’s still a random chance that a player will either get a piece of gear that fits their character or playstyle, or that they’ll get a drop that won’t. The game is still fully playable without ever entering the auction house (though it’s notable that, like Starcraft 2, Diablo 3 will require an active Internet connection to Battle.net to play), but this market will help players find and trade that gear. (Source)