Diablo III

[Duo Maxwell]

I played through Torchlight 2 times, and I can't say it's a fun game to me. I just got bored after a while. Aside from D3, currently I don't have anything of this genre to look forward to.

[Flying Dagger]

I feel Torchlight is too much of a diablo clone: I don't want another diablo, I want something new. Those who hate the "loot gathering" of Diablo will likely hate Torchlight too.

ATVI might be "evil". People may hate how they pretty much integrated d2jsp into the game (real money trading exist and is quite popular in both D2 and WoW - why would some ppl be fine with d2 and not d3?). Some may hate how there is no single player option (as much as I want it, the lack of SP wouldnt turn me away). At the end of the day, I trust that D3 will be a good game given blizzard's reputation: the money is unlikely to be wasted.

So I will play D3, but I question how long D3 can get me hooked. I *will* want to finish the game in hell just to beat the challenge. I doubt I will have the patience for HC toons though.

[Ithekro]

Thing is, there is a single player game...just you have to be online to play it. It encourages to you join a party after "normal" mode.

If I recall I only played Diablo II through normal and part of nightmare mode (into Act III I think, maybe the start of Act IV). Then I tried other characters over time. My friend I I only got into Nightmare mode with our group and didn't get far into it.

Sure there is more stuff and more levels, but we really didn't see the need to play the game three times per character.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Penny Arcade raised an interesting point.

Blizzard claim that they will not sell items themselves, but only let players trade with each other.

But if a player don't actually know who the sellers ARE, as in you can't link an item to an account from the player's end, we have to take Blizzard at their word that the item you buy was purchased from another player.

If you are Activision, why won't you start to insert bot-sellers into the market to generate pure profit?

I mean, that's cheating, but cheating is fair game here. Blizzard is judge and jury. If the game company want to start making money selling loot to players behind anonymity, it's not like anyone would find out.

[felix]

Would certainly hit new lows in the industry if that happens.

[Kafriel]

Who's to say that 90% of all market items haven't been farmed by bots and that Blizzard doesn't control the majority of the market?

[Flying Dagger]

Blizzard can already do that via all their current set of games: esp WoW. How do you know the gold that you just bought isn't coming from a support person who have gone rogue? Maybe a significant amount of gold sellers are actually working for blizzard? How about d2jsp? Blizzard can cash in through that as well.

So what if you can link an item to an account? If blizzard is doing it behind the scene they have infinite amount of D3 accounts.

If it is done on a small scale, such act will ruin blizzard's reputation.
If it is done on a large scale which net profits up to the 100k's. That number will have to show up on the balance sheet somewhere. Attempts to hide it may cause blizzard to fail an audit.
They may be sued for scam - not scamming players, but scamming those who paid to post up the auctions since it is "impossible to compete with blizzard".

D2 nightmare/hell may share the similar maps (which I may get bored of), but mobs gain new properties which will require some more patience and better decision making to tackle (assuming you did not somehow overbuff yourself).

[Kafriel]

They may be sued for scam - not scamming players, but scamming those who paid to post up the auctions since it is "impossible to compete with blizzard".

That's really the kicker, even if you take blizzard to court, whoever's got the most money always wins, so it's a lost cause before it even gets started

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by Kafriel

Who's to say that 90% of all market items haven't been farmed by bots and that Blizzard doesn't control the majority of the market?

Blizzard had no reason to up to now, for as long as they have the official stance of fighting against selling virtual goods for money. The old system is inefficent, having the need to go into virtual-dark alleys and stuff.

It is only now, with the DIII system, that Blizzard has the means to seriously abuse their position.

Yes, if they do it it would destabilise the game economy. But they already gave up economic controls the second they linked the game items to real world currency in an official capacity. So they have nothing to gain by not selling items themselves.

What is the reason Blizzard say they won't sell items themselves? Well, they say it to pretend they are not being greedy. In order to stop people revolting. But that's all it is; words. There is no reason for Blizzard to actually follow their own promises as long as it isn't in the User Agreement. There is no "contract".

[Kafriel]

So they have nothing to gain by not selling items themselves.

I don't get it, can't Blizzard be running 100 gold selling sites and plant farmers to do it? They'd still gain money without selling items per se.

[felix]

Originally Posted by Kafriel

I don't get it, can't Blizzard be running 100 gold selling sites and plant farmers to do it? They'd still gain money without selling items per se.

They can. But they don't need to plant farmers to do it.

[Kafriel]

Would be a good front if they wanted to claim they got nothing to do with it - you'd see the state the game is in.

[Ithekro]

There might be tax issues if Blizzard did it themselves rather than have an Ebay like system that they only managed. Not everywhere, but just in some states or countries with sales tax or perhaps tarriffs (not sure if you can import or export a virtual item).

[felix]

@Kafriel

It makes no sense to plant farmers since for one they don't need to, they can just give themselvs the virtual gold, secondly diablo isn't a MMO (strictly speaking) so you can't actually see the farmers farming, and third but not least, assuming the system worked in such a way you could see them, what would be the point, you would just be degrading the experience for your game; let's face it nobody is going to sit and count gold farmers farming, and even if they would, you stand to gain less then you lose by having them.

Also on the topic of economy, unless the items are locked on purchase which if they know what the hell the are doing (will be) everything in the gold house will just get snatched and sold in the money house; similarly you might have people just buying and re-selling in the money house.

@Ithekro

I suspect it's relatively tax free.

[Ithekro]

Some of the forthcoming beta testers are "excited" to test out the new AH system...just to see what it takes to break it, and/or the market. They want to see if there is a viable way to make a nitch market, like say "Staff of Jordan" or whatever and try to corner the market of that item or whatever it is that is desired but common enough to get some of if a group takes down an area repeatedly.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

Some of the forthcoming beta testers are "excited" to test out the new AH system...just to see what it takes to break it, and/or the market. They want to see if there is a viable way to make a nitch market, like say "Staff of Jordan" or whatever and try to corner the market of that item or whatever it is that is desired but common enough to get some of if a group takes down an area repeatedly.

Yep, this is what happens when real money is involved; you get speculators who will play it like a stockmarket.

Blizzard is going to have its hands full keeping the trading market stable. I know with 100% certainty that the DIII trade market is going to implode, I just don't know in what way. The game developers have no idea what they are getting themselves in to, the same way they had no idea what WoW did to their company when they first began the project.

The Beta would be fun to watch; let's see how Blizzard tries to run a dual currency economy properly, when most real world nations have no idea how it could be done.

[Ithekro]

Save the World! Buy a Stone of Halaa! Only five dollars, Australian.

[felix]

Is D3 region locked btw? As in the market is region locket.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by felix

Is D3 region locked btw? As in the market is region locket.

It seems to be as everything else in the game is region locked. And also, you can only have a maximum of 10 characters per account. Which is just silly as then you can't even have one character for every gender and class.

I would rage, but I am not buying the game anymore so it hurts much less for me.

[felix]

Just great. All that's left now is for the game to be extremely short.