A disservice?

[Roland]

Simply put, IMO, the AH is a choice you can make. You can use it, or not. Any consequences to your gameplay or satisfaction are then solely yours. Just like what difficulty you play in or how fast you get there, or whether you're an altoholic or not.

Taking a feature away because you can't keep yourself from using it doesn't make sense. That's your issue, not the game's.

(Not aimed at anyone in particular here.)

Agreed.

Also, I'd just like to say that I just beat Belial in a single try. Apparently I'm much better at playing at 2:00 PM after a decent night's sleep than I am at 2:00 AM. It was almost trivially easy. Guess I was more tired than I thought, although I know that gear I bought last night helped mitigate the damage. It's amazing what a few small percentage points can do in terms of damage reduction. Now, if only I could get some decent Shoulders! Also, changing out Multishot for Vault didn't hurt (although it wasn't necessary), and changing Impale from Impact to Chemical Burn made a difference in my damage, too. So, now on to Act 3 and eventually level 60. Then the real fun begins (Nephalem Valor).

[Arnulf]

Simply put, IMO, the AH is a choice you can make. You can use it, or not. Any consequences to your gameplay or satisfaction are then solely yours. Just like what difficulty you play in or how fast you get there, or whether you're an altoholic or not.

Taking a feature away because you can't keep yourself from using it doesn't make sense. That's your issue, not the game's.

(Not aimed at anyone in particular here.)

My viewpoint of this, which coincindentally aligns a bit with Roland's, is that you can either

a) farm for that special item that will make you progress, or

b) farm the gold which allows you to buy that item on the softcore auction house.

Either way it is a time sink. Me, I'm preferring option B, because it's more "controlled" for lack of a better word. I like the auction interface. It's like a restricted version of the search feature on wowhead.com.

I'm taking it slow at the moment. Got a female wizard (witch?, sorceress?) in Act 1 nightmare right now past the sunken temple. The prices for items are still manageable for me. Although I'll probably have to ditch the gold find gear now and replace it with real damage and vitality gear.

I wonder what will happen to the softcore AH when the real money auction house opens with the possibility to buy gold. I guess the prices will rise considerably. Until then I plan to have fun and don't worry too much over it.

-Arnulf

[LochnarITB]

Question for both you and Loch. Are either or both of you doing something to pause the game before you AFK? Since bringing up a window or menu will actually pause the game if you are the only one in a non public game, I'm just curious if that has an effect one way or the other. I've not really tested I generally haven't AFK'd for more than about 5-10 minutes and that was usually in a multi game.

I didn't know the game could be paused. Inventory, skills, etc. windows didn't pause it so, after reading this yesterday, I tried the game menu and that did, indeed, pause the game.

Anyway, it happened again last night, twice. The first time was before finding out about the pause. I had parked him in an already cleared area. The second time was paused with the game menu up. Also of note, my connection does not die. I fall back to the hero list when the OK is clicked and all the achieves for my friends list are reported in chat. I should probably try to make this happen and time it to see if there is a set time.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if I was the only one seeing this problem. That's kind of the story of my life.

[Mavfin]

Question for both you and Loch. Are either or both of you doing something to pause the game before you AFK? Since bringing up a window or menu will actually pause the game if you are the only one in a non public game, I'm just curious if that has an effect one way or the other. I've not really tested I generally haven't AFK'd for more than about 5-10 minutes and that was usually in a multi game.

I didn't know the game could be paused. Inventory, skills, etc. windows didn't pause it so, after reading this yesterday, I tried the game menu and that did, indeed, pause the game.

Anyway, it happened again last night, twice. The first time was before finding out about the pause. I had parked him in an already cleared area. The second time was paused with the game menu up. Also of note, my connection does not die. I fall back to the hero list when the OK is clicked and all the achieves for my friends list are reported in chat. I should probably try to make this happen and time it to see if there is a set time.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if I was the only one seeing this problem. That's kind of the story on my life.

Any possibility it's related to power management on your LAN port? i.e. after a certain amount of time idle it puts that in a different state? (I know, simple, but you have to ask it.)

Sounds like the session server stops getting keepalive packets or whatever Blizzard uses.

[LochnarITB]

Any possibility it's related to power management on your LAN port? i.e. after a certain amount of time idle it puts that in a different state? (I know, simple, but you have to ask it.)

Sounds like the session server stops getting keepalive packets or whatever Blizzard uses.

I don't think so. Every power management feature I've ever found has been disabled. This is an always on machine, not even a screen saver. Blizzard doesn't lose me. I don't have to re-login, just resume game (oops, misstated earlier - it drops me back only to my toon's screen, not even the hero list.). It continues to feed me info coming in over chat.

[Mavfin]

\
I don't think so. Every power management feature I've ever found has been disabled. This is an always on machine, not even a screen saver. Blizzard doesn't lose me. I don't have to re-login, just resume game (oops, misstated earlier - it drops me back only to my toon's screen, not even the hero list.). It continues to feed me info coming in over chat.

Yeah, the 'lobby' server keeps you, but the 'game session' one loses you, is what I was saying.

[Treesh]

I had parked him in an already cleared area. The second time was paused with the game menu up.

My lengthy AFKs were all in town, not out in the world. Maybe that's the difference?

[LochnarITB]

I should probably try to make this happen and time it to see if there is a set time.

30 minutes

At least that's the result from my 2 tries just now. That may seem like an excessive time to complain about but, because of <TMI>, I often have urgent AFKs that can extend longer. Such AFKs are a large part of why I lost the privilege of raiding or even grouping with my fellow Lurkers, something I enjoyed very much. It is also the reason I probably will not attempt to group in D3.

Bottom line, if they didn't require online play, or at least had no timeout, I wouldn't lose progress in the gaming that is left to me.

[LavCat]

TMI???

(Sorry for three question marks but for some reason the server requires a message length longer than five characters.)

[Jabberwolky]

Speaking on the auction house and useful gear for others. I would suggest a thread divided by hardcore/normal, where fellow lurkers can post leet gear they would like to see in the hands of another lurker. I melt most of mine for materials but it doesn't take long to get a nice pile of mats. I think it would be a good way to spread the nice gear to fellow lurkers and for those that have a disdain for the auction house, a nice way to part with good gear.

[Mavfin]

TMI???

(Sorry for three question marks but for some reason the server requires a message length longer than five characters.)

Too Much Information