06-03-2012, 11:02 AM
Some thoughts versa the OP after reaching Inferno: after several somewhat frustrating hell a3/a4 runs (various elite packs still destroy me), I decided to start playing Auction House III, and indeed, I have some cheap upgrades on order that should double my resistances and DPS. Unfortunately I had to navigate a fairly primitive auction house system to find these affordable likely-not-even-good-deals, and then you have all the inherient drama of an auction system, watching for being out-bid, watching people ignore your sell auctions, waiting a day for the results only to find you've been out-bid and need to look anew, etc. It is something I have already spent hours trying to figure out. Meanwhile I don't feel like playing my high-level toon much while waiting for these upgrades to come in. So I can already see why some people are disliking Auction House difficulty, not only is it far faster than farming stuff yourself, it's also sufficiently clunky to consume a fair amount of time trying to figure out, and put one off from playing.
However as for people playing nothing but the auction house, there have been games with auction houses before, even games with actual working economies (as opposed to WoW's BoPs), and yes there is a subset of people who spend most of their time buying low and selling high. These are usually among the richest players in the game world as well, as at a certain point of capital, any and all farming methods will be outstripped. It remains a small group though because this isn't easy to do, not everyone has the skills or patience or interest for it. The only reason these power traders can make money is because other players are making economically poor choices that either cost them money or simply don't make money as efficiently, and in order to keep supplying goods or money to the market, they must cover any shortfall by actually creating game goods (playing/farming.) The power traders "leech" their game goods off of what others generate, so someone must be generating the goods then for the traders to gain anything.
Diablo 3 ought to be roughly the same, even if most inferno players end up using the AH, only a small handful will be saavy enough to significantly increase their gold through trading alone, not to mention also be so interested in trading as to not bother with killing demons. It also bears noting that power trading was perfectly viable in Diablo 2 as well, particularly if you used forums to facilitate. The AH may make power trading more accessible to a different generation, but it didn't create power trading itself, nor can it turn everyone into a power trader.
However as for people playing nothing but the auction house, there have been games with auction houses before, even games with actual working economies (as opposed to WoW's BoPs), and yes there is a subset of people who spend most of their time buying low and selling high. These are usually among the richest players in the game world as well, as at a certain point of capital, any and all farming methods will be outstripped. It remains a small group though because this isn't easy to do, not everyone has the skills or patience or interest for it. The only reason these power traders can make money is because other players are making economically poor choices that either cost them money or simply don't make money as efficiently, and in order to keep supplying goods or money to the market, they must cover any shortfall by actually creating game goods (playing/farming.) The power traders "leech" their game goods off of what others generate, so someone must be generating the goods then for the traders to gain anything.
Diablo 3 ought to be roughly the same, even if most inferno players end up using the AH, only a small handful will be saavy enough to significantly increase their gold through trading alone, not to mention also be so interested in trading as to not bother with killing demons. It also bears noting that power trading was perfectly viable in Diablo 2 as well, particularly if you used forums to facilitate. The AH may make power trading more accessible to a different generation, but it didn't create power trading itself, nor can it turn everyone into a power trader.