According to http://www.gameinformer.com/games/diablo_iii/b/pc/archive/2011/08/01/diablo-iii-will-have-real-money-auction-house.aspx, Blizzard's latest game, Diablo 3, will feature auctions that allow players to trade in-game items for real money (Real Money Trading/RMT). RMT has been an underground procedure for a variety of games, notably in World of Warcraft, and has long been dealt with harshly through terms that all players must agree to. It would seem that this time, rather than witness players give money to seedy underground Chinese organizations, Blizzard has decided to oficially sanction the practice themselves, under their own administration.

Pros:
This new practice allows players to actually profit from playing games. Instead of wasting your time farming for a very rare piece of armor to sell for a hefty sum of gold, you can put it up for sale for 30 bucks and have the equivalent of two months of WoW. Blizzard takes a small cut of the money, after the player has already paid a flat auction cost, but the rest of the money is yours to do with as you choose. You can choose to redeem this money through some sort of payment processor like PayPal, who will take their own cut, or keep the full profit in the form of what is essentially a Blizzard Gift Card, which you can spend on any Blizzard services you want (like more auctions, game time, or any games they sell).

Cons:
The fact remains that the money must come from somewhere. World of Warcraft is often criticized as an addiction which people waste their money on every month to satisfy. Despite that media criticism, Blizzard never forced players to pay more than $15 a month, and the only other costs would be in player services like character renames or server transfers. With this new auction system, however, I can only wonder how long it will take before more stories appear of players emptying their bank accounts to satisfy their addictive needs. RMT was a problem enough for some players without the company outright officially sanctioning it. If some Chinese teenager would sell their kidney for an iPad, why not also for the best armor in the game? If a child is playing on Mom or Dad's account and decides to check it out, what could happen if the child ends up spending their entire college fund?

What do you think about this new practice? Has Blizzard caught on to something innovative and special, or is this just the new all-time low stemming from the greed of Activision? If you had planned to buy Diablo 3, would this affect your purchase decision?

I don't see anything bad about this. The "black market" for virtual goods has always been alive and well, and this just makes the process easier for those who are okay with spending some real money to skip some grinding.

Also, this makes it a lot easier for a retiring player to reap some reward for the hard work they put into the game. And anybody who is crazy enough to sell their kidney doesn't care if the market is legal or not.

If lazy "gamers" want to pay money to skip half the game, that's fine with me. But as long as that doesn't mean you can't buy anything with in-game money at a reasonable price because everyone is asking for real money instead.

I think I may have just found my new job...

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/08/01/diablo-iii-no-mods-online-only-cash-trades/ :nope:

Alas, Diablo 3 has been Activisionised. See you guys in Torchlight 2. :bolt:

My thoughts pretty much.

I didn't have much interest in the game to begin with, but now I have zero interest. Torchlight 2, indeed. :thumbsup:

Another game with a terrible DRM.

I'm only mad about throwing mods out of the windows. If people need to enhance their e-peen with real money, so what? I couldn't care less whether someone has bought or found an item (since someone needs to find it first anyway) when they smash me in Diablo's trademark unbalanced PvP, and even less whether someone journeys to the depths of hell before I've left Tristram, through the power of his munnies.
But mods, those give variation and grow a real community. Just look at these here forums!

I don't understand their argument for no offline. The situation they describe as a problem is exactly how D2 worked and I never had a problem with it. Was there some huge outcry against it that I just didn't know about?

Hoo-boy :shakehead: Good thing Diablo was never that relevant to my interests, but i hope they get the two last parts of Starcraft 2 out before one of these ideas is included in them.

...Then again, i don't use mods for SC2 and it already has to be online to play it :shrug:

That's awesome! I don't mind mods to begin with, I'll buy the vanilla game and put it on the shelf when I'm bored, kind of like I did with my 80 other games. But if I can get good items in game and then sell them off to poor saps making a good buck or two on the side while doing something fun..I'm all for that!

Oh and the no offline thing..well I play 3 MMO's so that's obviously not going to bother me at all. But it does kinda svck I can't play it if I had no internet.

No, they're just using that reason (ppl having to waste time to lvl a new chr. to play on closed bnet) as an excuse to implement more DRM, anti-piracy, and anti-bot methods. ie, they're clamping down hard to try and prevent bots and other things. Whether it'll succeed is another matter. I mean, there were still farm-bots in WoW, after all. Har.

I was losing interest in this game to begin with, and this pretty much clinches it. FU Activision/Blizzard.

I don't care too much about the real-money thing, since one, I don't trade much to begin with and two, one doesn't have to trade with real-money players, but no-offline mode ticks me off something fierce.

Will Torchlight feature PvP though? That's my only real gripe with it (though TL2 is still on my insta-buy list).

Short answer: It will.
Long answer: YEEEEEEEEEAH!

Kind of disturbing news. I agree with Proditus that they're risking the equivalent of gambling addiction -- players who go broke in actual money instead of virtual. I play Guild Wars, and luckily they don't have the equivalent to this. On the other hand, maybe there are players who can handle this particular "drug".

Well, looks like I won't be buying Dianlo 3 after all.

The problem is, it IS in Guild Wars, it's just not official. There's a black market, just like there's a black market in all online games. All Blizzard is doing is cutting out the illegitimacy of the business model and attempting to control it. While it's not a good thing in general, the alternative is a black market that does the exact same thing without regulation, without control, without responsibility.

While I don't agree with the system in general, I can respect that some people are willing to pay for items and such, and that their choice is their choice. If they're going to be paying real money for stuff, they may as well do it through the company, who are far less likely to rip them off.