Monday, July 16, 2012

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.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Weekend (15 Jul) - End of the Road

Weekend (15 Jul) - End of the Road

On Friday Barbed reached level 60, the maximum level in Diablo 3. I've killed my way as far as Azmodan. Azmodan is part of Act III, so I still have to finish this Act and Act IV to get to Diablo.

I was excited to finally get access to level 60 gear, and immediately went to the Auction House to see what I could find. Yes, there was some awesome gear available, but the cost ... well, maybe I couldn't afford the really high end stuff from the Inferno level of difficulty, but surely there would be reasonably priced gear available for a young level 60 still at Hell level. Actually, no. Weapon prices run into the EIGHT digits - we're talking tens of millions of gold for one item. Ok, there were some "cheap" weapons for a million plus. The most gold I've ever had was about 480,000, but it's currently at 320,000. It might as well be zero for all the good it will do me.

I also checked out non-weapon gear, too, which is less expensive, but the prices were still well out of reach. Frustrated, I even gave the real money Auction House a look just to see what was there. As expected, prices ranged wildly. There were "bargains" as low as $5 - $15 on some good items, but I'm not buying pixels with real money.

Since the level 60 gear floods the market (46 pages of million plus cost gear), I had to restrict the AH to showing level 59 and below to see those under 60 items. There wasn't any help there, either. I seem to have pretty much the best gear available at level 59. I may find an upgrade on the AH now and then, but the upgrade would be modest at best.

Given the fact that gear drops can't possibly improve on the gear I already have, and that I can't afford much in the way of real improvements, Barbed will likely be facing Diablo down the road with the same gear he is wearing now. Whether it'll be good enough ... well, it will take a few more hours to find out.

One other issue that will keep me from buying much gear is that a change in the game has greatly increased the cost for repairing gear. What used to cost me 4-5k gold in gear repair is now averaging 12-15k. The result is that I am not making enough gold from questing now to even pay for my repairs. Selling gear is a hit or miss proposition, and costs me a 15% fee as well if it doesn't sell, which most don't. I'm looking at the likelihood of having to save all my gold just to pay for repairs, which sucks.

On a more positive note, I then went back to the forums for more information about changing my current build. Silver helped me put together the one I am using now, which is heavy on gaining back health, which I was having a problem with. It helped a lot, but now I needed a change. The new build is heavy on protection through armor enhancement as well as speed of attack. I took the new build into a dungeon area I'd cleared - with a little diffulty - once before. I wanted to see if I could tell a difference. Wow, what a difference!

Two things stood out with the new build, which I had to reach level 60 to use. First was that the enhanced protection was so much better Barbed could stand in AoE attacks without the immediate risk of dying. Second, the speed of attacks really cut down on the time it took to bring down bad guys. Here is what I did to change my build:

Primary Attack: Cleave/Scattering Blast --> Frenzy/Sidearm
Secondary Attack: Whirlwind/Blood Funnel -> WOTB/Insanity
Defense: Ground Stomp/Avalanche -> Ignore Pain/Ignorance
Might: Revenge/Provocation -> same
Tactics: Battle Rage/Swords to Ploughshares -> War Cry/Impunity
Rage: Earthquake/Path of Fire -> same
New Passives: Nerves of Steel, Tough as Nails, Ruthless

Even without having to go to a weapon/shield tank configuration, Barbed was extremely difficult to hit/hurt. Dual wielding with an ability that increases weapon speed with every hit turned even elite mobs into bloody hash in seconds. I can't emphasize enough how stunning the increase in protection and DPS was. In that one dungeon, I never had to retreat one time, even against elite sets of mobs that dropped AoE nastiness as well as stuns. To second guess myself a little, maybe I just happened on a very weak set of mobs. We'll see.

Update: Heart of Sin is the Azmodan fight. Barbed stood in the black AoE that killed him in an earlier level and crushed Azmodan without breaking a sweat. I'm feeling a bit invincible at the moment. I'm sure it won't last.

Update #2: Well, that didn't take as long as I thought it would. It's still Saturday afternoon and ...

Barbedwire has defeated Diablo AGAIN! This time in Hell level, and frankly, it wasn't very hard to do.

That is sort of the end. Barbed could be available after the vacation for groups, gold, and general slaughter if anyone is interested. Other than that, Barbed is officially retired. I think.


PS - I will be out of town 17 Jul - 1 Aug. I will not be taking along a laptop, so no WoW (even Happy is taking time off) or Diablo. How will I survive?

Friday, July 13, 2012

Thursday (12 July) - The Final Stretch

Thursday (12 July) - The Final Stretch

Barbed reached level 59 on Wednesdaynight and is now sporting two legendaries. The AoE nasties have gotten quite deadly, though, and that has started to slow down my progress. Barbed picked up a second legendary two-hand to test out. This one greatly increased my DPS and crit, but at considerable cost in health. I was hoping the increasing amount of "all resistance" gear I've accumulated would keep Barbed alive. If it was just AoE damage, I think I would have been fine. However, too many elites with too many stuns/freezes/etc kept Barbed in harm's way far too long. I went back to the other 2-hander.

The gear available at level 59 has not been very impressive, so the grinding will be slow until some better gear shows up on the Auction House. The gear dropped by mobs has been useless for anything but selling for a long time now. Finding a great piece of gear that you fought long and hard for is one of the pleasures of the game, and not having that is a major downside.

The level 60 gear looks better, but I'm not sure if Barbed will ever wear any of it. If he makes level 60 before reaching the end of Hell level, I'm sure he'll stock up on some level 60 gear for the final battle with Diablo. I don't plan on trying to complete the fourth and final level, Inferno. Once Barbed reaches level 60, and he kills Diablo at Hell level, I will be done with Diablo.

Thursday update: Barbed has gotten less and less happy with his 2-hander as the mobs have gotten progressively tougher. The slow attack speed reduced the number of health pots dropping and resulted in fewer hits which reduced my Life per hit stats, both of which are essential for survival. My last set of dual weapons were around 250 DPS each, which would not do, particularly since the 2-hander was at 461 DPS. I picked up a pair faster 1-handers with over 400 DPS each. The combined might of both raised the overall DPS to around 8900 (vs the 2-hander combined 8800). Everything else was on the plus side as well, and Barbed went back at it. Things were going well until Barbed came upon a pack of hulking phasebeasts. These four plus a blue elite were not the normal sort, which I've seen before and have been able to bring them down. I had just entered a circular cavern through a portal and there was only one way to go. The beasts were in my way.

I attacked. The phasebeasts immediately acquired bubbles (shields) around each that gave them complete immunity to my attacks. If I can't hit it, I can't heal, and Barbed died fast. I went at them a dozen times. There's no way around them, and it's impossible to get away from them by running through them. They are as fast as Barbed. The beasts also drop poison so I can't just stand and try to break the dang shields, either. They hang around just outside the portal. I've drawn them away a couple of times, but never far enough to leave room to get past them. I don't know how long it would it take to break a shield, but my full focus on one of them, and using my 2 minute cooldown nuclear attack (Earthquake) didn't kill it, either. I was able to kill the non-bubble protected elite, but not the stupid phasebeasts.

I read up on these monsters, trying to find a way to take them down. In every case I looked at, those shields do drop regularly. The ones I faced NEVER dropped their shields except when my Enchantress crowd controlled one. But I couldn't kill them in the short time of the CC, and they immediately restored their shields. Other posters have said this particular type of mob is among the top five in difficulty to kill.

It's funny. I also read about players skipping some mob packs that were too hard to deal with. I've never skipped a battle, and clear every dungeon. Until now. And I can't skip them, because I have no way around them. Well, I won't skip them, but I bet I know another way. I exited the game, then came back in. I then backed up one dungeon level before the encounter with the phasebeasts, cleared that level, and re-entered the phasebeast plagued level. As I'd hoped, when I returned to the Heart of the Damned dungeon level where I had been stymied, Diablo gave me a whole different set of mobs to engage. Oh, there were still plenty of hulking phasebeasts around - they just weren't shielded ones. Barbed cleared it out and is now in Areat Crater #2. I have no idea where that is in relation to how close I am to the Diablo encounter, but I think I'm still a ways away from that. Barbed is about halfway to level 60.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Monday (9 Jul) - A Legendary First

Monday (9 Jul) - A Legendary First

Barbed has continued to bang around the Diablo landscape, enjoying some nice success in short bursts of game time. I've continued to mess around with various styles of play, the most recent and successful so far being one which mushes together the "pound'em 'till you die" strategy with the "run for your life" strategy. The result is that Barbed keeps pounding as long as he is free of AoE type attacks (which deliver murderous amounts of damage and/or can stun/freeze). When those attacks start Barbed runs in loops that take him right back into the fight somewhere the away from the AoE. That has been working quite well. The fights can go a bit long, but Barbed generally survives the battle.

I've been changing up the gear stats a bit to see what works for me. I continue to focus on Strength and Vitality as the staple stats, but I have been changing other stats around.

Currently I am stacking "Life on Hit" on my weapons (which means what it says - I get x amount of additional life each time I hit something). On my other gear I was originally adding a lot of life regen, but it wasn't all that effective for me, so now I am adding "all resistance" stats, which reduces the amount of damage Barbed takes from all those AoE attacks.

I am always into the Auction House looking for bargains. I have been dual wielding two weapons since Silver made me give up my shield, but I recently ran across a nice two-hand weapon at a not to ignore low price of 10k gold, and decided to give it a try. If it didn't work out I figured I could resell it for a profit. Barbed took the weapon on a practice run, and when he came back he refused to give it up. Barbed is now hooked on 2-hand weapons.

Barbed is now level 56. He recently retired his first 2-hander for a new 2-hander called Messerschmidt's Reaver. It's the first Legendary piece of gear that I've acquired. It was surprisingly cheap at under 50k, as there were many others priced upwards of a million gold. The stats on these legendaries vary, and since so many are available I think some sellers give up and low ball the price. Whatever the reason, Barbed was happy to get it. The reality is that it's just another piece of gear - I don't think the legendary moniker includes any special abilities that aren't already listed in the stats. It's still cool.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Thursday (5 July) - Small Town Fireworks

Thursday (5 July) - Small Town Fireworks

In the San Diego County area there were at least five large fireworks displays for the 4th of July. The biggest, on the San Diego Bay, went off with a bang much larger than expected. That was because, somehow, the fireworks team managed to accidentally set off ALL of the fireworks on three of the four barges, at the same time. It was quite an impressive display, but the expected thirty minute show was over within five minutes.

The fireworks in Diablo are a little like that. A lot of grinding through paths already traveled to get to a few big bangs. For some reason I am still playing this game. In large part, I think it has to do with Happy's influence. I get a kick out of playing the Auction House for bargains and improved gear. Normally, I buy lower priced gear via the buyout option. Lately, though, I've been engaging in some bidding wars with other players. I was after a great set of shoulder gear, but I didn't want to pay more than 25k gold for it. I actually bid up the item to 29k. But I was again outbid with under a minute left and I let it go. No matter, gear on the AH changes pretty quickly, so it won't be long until Barbed gets an upgrade. Of course, after loading up on new gear I then want to go test out that new gear.

Barbed has gotten a bit jaded, however. I no longer care about dying. If an encounter goes bad, I don't bother trying to escape, as there's no penalty other than a little gold to repair gear. Most mobs, even high level ones, can be returned to after dying and they will still show the damage done to them before I died. That's very convenient.

Barbedwire reached level 54 last night. He is still in Hell level, well short of his third shot at Diablo, although I expect I will play enough to eventually get him there, as well as to the max level of 60.

Wild's guild has been advertising for a healer to run Dragon Soul. I think it's for the weekend raid (group 3), but Wild is out of touch now and I'm not sure. I have a hard time understanding why anyone still bothers to raid that place. Wild still gets in game for crafting things for Lao and Happy, and still runs into guild leader Bd on occasion. He's as busy as ever and always tells Wild how much the guild misses him, but doesn't ask why Wild hasn't returned. Wild is still listed on the guild raid calendar for all three raids, so Wild could sign up any time I felt like it. I'm pretty sure I will give the expansion, Mists of Pandaria, a try when it rolls out, primarily to get the immediate gear upgrades that come with leveling from 85 to 90. Perhaps that will suck Wild further into the game. But maybe not. Adding to the above, the Message of the Day in the guild was "Despite recent developments, we are still raiding and playing!" I wonder what that was/is about.

By the way, Blizzard is now offering the full set of World of Warcraft for $30. That's ten dollars each for the Warchest (original game plus Burning Crusade expansion), Wrath of the Lich King expansion, and Cataclysm expansion. I think I paid close to $200 for all of that . . .