Wow! That is possibly the most amazing metaphor I have ever heard in my life... I didn't care about the RMAH before but now I think I may be angry about it.
If I can just reach one person then my job is done
|||1) As soon as a game has money involved it is no longer a game, it becomes serious business. 2) The point of an RPG is the journey not the destination. Spending money to avoid the journey of character progression defeats the entire purpose of the game.
3) Having two auction houses splits up the market and hinders those who want to do things the right way and use the gold auction house.
4) Spending money on virtual goods is fundamentally vulgar.
5) The introduction of a financial reward destroys friendly teamwork between anonymous game players.
6) Financial rewards for scamming, account hacking and botting.|||Quote:
4) Spending money on virtual goods is fundamentally vulgar.
I can accept all of your other points as valid, but not this one. spending money on anything that has an established demand and value isnt anything, its just economics. its certainly not vulgar, unless you are screaming the F word while doing it...|||lol I like how a lot of the post here are people who support the RMAH who are trying to make the opposition sound like angry children. That really helps to get to the root of the real beef with the RMAH and in no way makes you look like angry children yourself.
Anyway the only beef I have wit the RMAH is the potential for high end items to be removed from the in game economy and only be traded in the real world economy. The trade economy is a big part of Diablo games. To suddenly have it segregated would be bad IMO. There's no way to know at this point how it will play out, but I can see potential for the in game economy getting screwed up.|||Zeek, I agree. there is a good chance that the economy will be split in 2. good chance that it will be lopsided in favor of the rmah as well. most people, if they find an elite item that they dont need, will sell it for $$ not gold, cause who couldnt use a quick $20? the gold ah will prob lack in elite gear. could get ugly...|||Since you can use the RMAH without spending real money I don't see the problem; no one in this game has any reason to not shop at the RMAH if they plan on trading for items at all.
The only problem is see is gold could feasibly become a worthless currency; but since gold also has a real money value and there will likely be a lot of gold sinks I'm not too worried about that either.|||Quote:
I want to know what people really think will be the major negative(s) to the rmah.
It will take over everything.
People are really stupid about money. Even though most adults could make far more at their hourly job, and those too young for that could get similar results by borrowing their parent's riding lawn mower and touring their neighborhood the moment a real world price tag gets attached, even for trivial amounts such as 5 dollars or less people's attitudes change quite drastically. That WD item you found on your non WD that you either don't need for your own WD or have no interest in the WD class? Without RMAH, the chances are much higher you'd hand it to the WD you've been playing with a while than with such a system in place.
Not to mention hackers/dupers/botters go where the money is. Just having a RMAH, at all is holding up a big "Exploit me!" sign. And before anyone says that third party sites can still do it, sure they can but their dodgy nature means that far fewer will be willing to risk it.
It also negatively affects the gold AH, which would otherwise be fine, but with all the good items only being listed for real money you end up with a pay to win mentality at work. I don't know about the rest of you but if I'm going to pay to win something it had better involve multiple attractive naked women and a hottub. Last I checked, killing mobs in 3D isometric doesn't qualify.|||The monetizing of Diablo 3 is a despicable act. The counter arguments that stem from such ridiculous quotes as, �if you don�t like it, don�t use it�, are not really valid arguments to begin with. They even come close to sounding vaguely familiar to the line of thinking that lead to the slow movement of the Jewish people into death camps in the 1940�s. Hitler didn�t all at once say, �**** it, and let�s kill the Jews.� It was a slow process that had clear staging point. The people of the time, like many people who don�t care about the RMAH today, simply stated �It doesn�t affect me so it doesn�t matter.� This is a dangerous line of thinking that allows atrocious ideas fester and turn into something far more dastardly. While the frivolousness of real money transactions in a digital game can never compare to the genocide experienced in the Holocaust, an act that was infinitely more heinous, I believe that this comparison is the most appropriate and one that more people can understand than any other. I also firmly believe that the RMAH is a staging point for even more ways to leech money off of the largest player base in gaming.
We have come to a time in gaming where we are not enjoying the simplicity of gaming. Every decision now has a monetary value attached to it. Given that gold sells for real world currency, repairing or buying an upgrade now goes beyond the decision of, �nice, I�ll just buy this piece from the vendor�, to a decision based on losing money. Playing with friends is now also damaged. Sure, I would help a friend out if we killed a boss and an amazing piece of gear dropped that he was looking for, and I would expect the same from them. Given that some items in Diablo 2 sold for hundreds of dollars, and some will definitely sell for more than fifty dollars on the RMAH, we come to the question �is my friend a $50 friend?� I know for certain if I looted an item that sold upwards in the hundreds I would not just hand it over, even if it was simply from the fear of them selling it themselves instead of me.
How will they write up the user agreement to deal with the legality of banning accounts that you have purchased products on. Before it was simple, Blizzard had a firm stance on buying digital items and banned people who were caught for doing so. Now with the legitimizing of this before sinful act we come to a question of how can they ban you when you have real currency invested into these digital items. Are you simply spending $200 dollars to deck a character out, but really only renting it? Will voicing your opinions on the forums that they don�t agree with cause you to lose a very costly investment due to their frequency to ban anything they don�t like to see? Much like communist countries I might add. Now that they have also added a Bnet bank account, be it �Bnet bucks� or whatever their self-appointed clever naming for it will be. How do banned accounts work now? Will the money be distributed to a bank account that you have pre-selected, or back to your debit card? If you never put in bank information will banned accounts be new ways for Blizzard to cash in on your leftovers in your Bnet currency? How can they legitimize banning accounts now that real money is being tied so strongly into their games?
It is obvious that this system will provide them with more income than what it will take to simply pay for the servers. If every post costs a set amount, even if the item is bought or not you are charged, and if every time you win an item you have to pay a fee to receive it, then it is certain that with all of these outrageous fees they will turn a large profit. I don�t think it is bad for blizzard to turn a profit for work they have done, but they are essentially making absurd amounts of money from automated systems, be it server transfers in Warcraft to automated RMAH listings and receiving of items. They have no obligation to update the game as often as Warcraft either. Outside of expansion packs I don�t see a lot of content that will continue to come out other than a few bug fixes here and there. This gives them an unprecedented way to receive currency without actively doing any real work, much like the people who exploit video game developer�s hard work by simply commenting their irrelevant thoughts on snippets of in-game footage. This applies even more so to people who commentate on professionals playing a game and accruing ridiculous amounts of money on You Tube for essentially doing nothing.
The RMAH arguments aren�t all about buying power, and I find Blizzard�s counter arguments to those to be good ones. It is essentially a co-op game and Jay Wilson and Co. have successfully succeeded in destroying any hope of their being competitive PvP, even though most competitive players do not want an E-sport they just want a ladder with competition. With it being completely co-op buying power is only beneficial, and with competition being destroyed PvP is also meaningless. The serious points are the ones that have essentially turned this game into a digital world where our decisions are now all based around a factor of money, and not a factor of fun. This is what the RMAH is doing, and this is why it will be the beginning of even more outrageous installments in future titles.|||Ah, nothing invalidates someone's opinion faster than comparing the mentality behind a video game auction house to the mentality behind Nazi Germany. Such a distasteful way to try to dramatize and sell what at face value is a poorly realized argument.|||Oh good grief!
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