08-02-2011, 06:26 PM
(08-02-2011, 05:06 PM)RTM Wrote: From what I've read, you are able to participate on the real$ AH without having to ever spend real$. There is nothing preventing you from posting items, building up $ on your Blizzard account, then spending that money on an item. The problem I personally am going to have is, every time I get an item, I am going to think about it in terms of real world $: "This unique would be a huge upgrade for my Barb but I can get $10 for it on the AH...", etc. It's probably something I'll get over but that initial hump is going to take some time.
I don't see how they could let you participate in the $AH without having to invest some level of cash unless they let you put a certain amount of items up a week or month while waiving the posting fee.
As for some other concerns I have to disagree with some previous poster's conclusions. I think it is possible that the real money AH could benefit the economy of DIII greatly. Yes, items having a real money value will in effect begin to remove them from circulation, but for a game like Diablo this can be a good thing. Items don't degrade in this game thus once they are generated they have the possibility of remaining in the system forever. Thus items that once had value will, eventually, have no value because the supply has just continued to rise over time. The real money AH could end up stiffling levels of deflationary values on high ticket items while also maintaining the perception that these items are actually findable (the other main way to stiffle deflation would just be to make drop rates insanely low to the point that most players will never see one drop realistically: Zod runes.)
It is also possible that adding a real money component to the AH will reinforce the main gold economy of the game. In Diablo II gold essentially became worthless, being replaced by items such as the SoJ and later with runes etc. If you have a real money value on an item of $15 and an equivelant gold value on that item in the normal AH then gold itself becomes a valuable currency. This translation would occur even if practically nobody ever used the real money AH and would in turn help to create a stable in game economy for players that just wanted to use in game assets to trade and buy.