Blizzard vs. Real Money Trading (RMT)

[Bolty]

I can't help but think that even with RMT (maybe because of it?), Diablo III will be in a better economic situation than Diablo II where gold was more or less worthless and currency was based on either massively duped items or imaginary currency on a 3rd-party website.

Perhaps. Thing is, if Diablo II had an in-game auction house, then gold could theoretically mean something. Sure, it may get to the point where 10 million gold buys a hamburger, but essentially gold would be an arbitration enabler. That Stone of Jordan would trade for a million gold or something, and that million gold would in turn buy something else.

Not having participated in any of this Diablo II activity, though, I admit I'm ignorant of potential issues with that.

Basically, without an in-game Auction House, all such activity had to shift elsewhere - and real money wound up being exchanged. Blizzard has an active policy with WoW to include an in-game Auction House, followed by random enforcement discouraging the active trading of real money for gold and items. They chose not to do this with Diablo III.

The common statement about all of this is that it opens Blizzard up to legal issues. If you have an item that sells for $40 regularly - say, something truly rare and powerful - and Blizzard nerfs that item, they just cost you $40. Every single activity in the game will have an economic impact, and that really kills the "fun" for me, even if such "fun" was just an illusion to begin with. I could certainly sell my World of Warcraft account for decent cash, but I don't think about it that way. Having an in-game Auction House where things sell for real money draws me out of that immersion and reminds me that I'm playing a game that generates X amount of money per hour, even if such money is insignificant compared to my employment. It's not "wow, look at that killer rare item, it'll really boost my character and/or alt," but "wow, look at that killer rare item, I can make $10 off that." Erm...yeah.

To each their own, though. I don't begrudge people for still being excited about D3. Combined with the Activision "merge" with Blizzard leading directly to money-grabbing changes to WoW, I'm just really "meh" about D3 right now, and there are going to be many good alternatives to the game.