Uber upgrade?

[FenrisWulf]

Okay, I'm going against my previous assertion that I was done with this thread, but only to answer a direct question. :D

@whyBish:
I guess you would have to consider the reasons for my opposition to item purchase to understand how much shutting down eBay and item-selling sites would help. Again, I'm of the opinion that the trade of items for money gives a market to stockpiling of hacked/botted/duped gear that would not otherwise exist; see previous posts for extra verbage. But to support a market of this sort, you need a fairly large consumer base willing to pay you money for items, and you actually need to have money coming in exchange for the items. Your AB weapon bank idea, as far as I can tell, still keeps all of the merchandise in-game (ie, you add a few items to get credit, and then you can pull items out at a loss of credit; it's just managed in-game trading); if you were able to pull out Real Life™ money as you accrue a positive balance...well, if done via hacking/botting/duping, then you're just cheating your friends, and on a very small scale. Same thing with the neigher scenario: it's too complicated of a procedure to ever make a business out of.

eBay and item-selling sites are different in the sense that they quickly and effectively put you in contact with the entire population of BNet, and provide efficient methods of money transfer between lots of people that you don't have to personally know. Hacking/botting/duping becomes more profitable (more people, easy to get money from), and becomes a profession (monetarily) worth getting into. Development of more effective hacks/bots/dupes also is more lucrative, less so than in a small-scale neighborly-trade situation. In my opinion, you need commercial-style sites to make this work. And commercial sites can be shut down.

I am naive on several levels, though, of course. For instance, Blizzard would never take and enforce a stance like this; it's too hard (requires monitoring of BNet chatter, for instance). And there may be some inherent value to having 20 copies of the same item that I'm not aware of. And maybe most of the people aren't complicit hackers/dupers/botters by convenience (ie, they participate in it mainly because it's easy), but because they really have some sort of inexplicable competitive urge to be better than everyone else at this endless level grind. That would kind of mess up some of my theories, too. In general, though, I at least stand my belief that eBay and item-selling sites Are Not Helping™.

Also, my belief that item purchase isn't good for Diablo II. :)

Note: the opinions on this matter were strongly influenced by this article (dii.net link, in case you want to avoid), and then reinforced by later research into the subject.

EDIT: Heck, here's even a link to my research paper (Word document), but only if you're really interested (it has a bibliography of interesting sources on the matter, hopefully still being hosted). :P It's not spectacularly well-written, sorry; I was overall a bit strapped for time and finished most of it on the plane from SF to Virginia.