Monday (16 Jul) - The Diablo Real Money Auction House

Monday (16 Jul) - The Diablo Real Money Auction House

Last week Blizzard opened an Auction House for Diablo that allows players to use real money (instead of game earned gold) to purchase gear. I took a look at it, and read some of the early reports. I have no intention of using it, but I am curious about how it works and who would actually spend hard cash to get better gear.

So, how does it work? It's surprisingly simple. The Real Money Auction House (RMAH) works pretty much like the gold AH. Players can post gear that they own on the RMAH, listing them for cash money instead of gold. Players must have an Authenticator (a secure device that reduces the chances of fraud, account stealing, etc) to use the RMAH. I believe the maximum price allowed for a single item is $250.00. No kidding. The transaction is handled through the players battle.net account. Blizzard acts like a bank since money earned can be held by Blizzard and used by the player to buy off the RMAH or anything else that Blizzard sells. If you want cash instead of letting Blizzard hold your money, you can "cash out" and Blizzard will somehow send you the money (I believe they work with Paypal for that). Blizzard takes a 15% cut of all money that is cashed out.

Since it is still in it's infancy, pricing is crazy high and all over the place. If it's a success, the prices should come down and stabilize.

The real question is why anyone would buy gear with real money? Diablo is a largely single player game, and there is no pvp between players, so its not like you need to compete with other players (such as in WoW). Even when grouped with other players, nobody can tell what gear you have, and most wouldn't care because it's irrelevant to everyone but the player.

Of course, since real money is involved, hackers and farmers are already rampant. Here is just a couple of snapshots from various websites:

From iTechPost - "Check out this interview by games consultant Markus Eikenberry with a Diablo 3 gold farmer who simultaneously runs 100 Diablo 3 accounts and amasses 60 million gold an hour between them. What's most telling is that the gold farmer actually contacted Mr. Eikenberry to do the interview, hoping to shed light on the issue of game exploits so that Blizzard would hopefully fix them and slow the rate of gold flooding the market. You know there's a problem when even the farmers are concerned that it's just a little too easy to farm."

Another site - "Hackers who have pillaged thousands of accounts over the past few months have been waiting for this day where they can unload all their stolen gear for real life cash. They likely have billions of gold racked up from compromised accounts, and with clever use of both the AH and RMAH, will likely make a pretty penny so long as they haven’t since been caught by Blizzard. But really when you think about it, what motivation does Blizzard have to catch these botters or hackers when they’re going to be taking a portion of everything they sell?"

As for whether the every day player can actually afford any of the high end gear (anything at level 60), it takes a deep bank account for the RMAH or endless farming to amass the kind of gold required to buy off the gold AH. Obviously, it seems, there are players who are paying that price for the personal pleasure of having awesome gear.

There is one caveat to all this. What if Blizzard decides to implement a pvp system, or other mechanism that makes having better gear than another player important? Then all bets are off, and things could get even more insane.