The Obsession about the Economy

[Archon_Wing]

Seriously, why do people care that the value of their duped soj's are falling?

With the recent duping spree, people cry that their soj's are becoming useless. The Soj economy is broken! D2 sucks! So I hear.

Ahem, D2 is broken because Soj's are not worth anything. That's pretty funny to me. I mean you have an economy based on counterfeit money which buys illegal goods (dupes). It it no suprise that it would have collapsed. It was worth nothing to begin with, it's just that its true value beings to show.

Blizzard should focus on defeating the hacks. They should not concern themselves with fixing this "economy." This economy was forged by the hackers anyways. Yes, there are legit Soj's and windforces out there. But these days, when you can't tell if their duped or not, does it even matter? The economy is a fabrication of some players who wish to grow rich of their Ebay sales. Everyone else who wishes to acquire the best items, like me, build on this economy which the hackers relentlessly exploit. Our greed only makes them happier. The common people MF, the hackers dupe and hack, and the common players get ripped off.

So if the Soj does become useless, rejoice! The hackers have ruined themselves! For those of you still obessed with the economy, a post-soj possibly temporaily legit economy will arise from the ashes. (of course, this depends on when Blizzard releases 1.10)

Finally this is a game. Why people would care so much about an in-game economy baffles me :)

*hacker in most cases here represent l4mer script kiddies. Do not confuse them with people who actualy learn about programming. :)

[Az3ar]

Ummm, the fact that the SOJs are becoming worthless makes the SOJ economy weaker, which is a very good thing, because it was corrupted to the core...

To negate the broken means to fix it, so the D2 economy as a whole is much better because the bad economy is gone, and a new one will spring, hopefully, it wont be so bad as the one before it, and players would now trade whith eny item they see fit, and not care about how many SOJs are they getting....

[Archon_Wing]

Exactly, you're one of the first people I met that sees the truth :)

[Wapptor]

Yeah, imagine this eutopian forest where everyone just trades because someone wants something they have and vice versa, value? whats value?

-Wapptor

[AtomicKitKat]

Not because I want to use them on my characters, but because I want to use them to socket my crafted items! :D

[Archon_Wing]

I thought that worked with rares O_O

[AtomicKitKat]

Rare, Crafted, Unique, who cares? As long as it means one less stupid dupe out on the market. :D Next thing you know, 1.10 will introduce inscribing(add name) recipe:

3 SoJ + any item=Personalised item.

Overall though, I still find the SoJ-based recipes ridiculous. To date I have been playing D2 for the past 1 1/2 years, of which I have spent the last 3 months playing legitly on B.Net(before that I couldn't afford a legit copy of D2) and NEVER seen a SoJ drop. Hell, I don't ever recall seeing a UNIQUE ring drop, PERIOD! It's ridiculous. What SoJs aren't "stolen" by the pindlebots("stolen" in the sense of them taking another one away from the quota for the day, thus denying "legit" hunters from acquiring them), are dupes created by the tons of script kiddies out there.

[Az3ar]

Well, you see, using SOJs as the currency is just the same way money goes in real life, you trade for them even if you aren't going to use them on your characters, but because you KNOW other people value these.

Same thing whith money, the paper and coin is useless to you as a material, but as a worth, it has it, when you go and buy a loaf of bread for a dollar, you really dont need a piece of paper and need some bread, while the other guy gives you the bread because he knows he can get something else for a dollar..... and on and on it goes......

[jonnybow]

I started up playing classic again ,not so many jerks there :) .
I aint got items but it's fun (2 legit soj's,magefist,WOE and frosties).

You can see what hack's/cheat's has done to b.net today :( ,it's just sad .

I still think the old economi and moral was far better than it is today .
Everything is based on items in LOD and the best items is the hacked ones
( those not made by blizzard :) )

I'm 100% sure that they dont take away all hacks/dupes in 1.10 ,
Why?
They havent done it so far ,there are still 1.01 dupes out there .
Maphack/shopbot has been there since day one .

Blizzard said when they realesed D2 that cheats will not be allowed and
accounts will be deleted bla bla bla bla .

If they had been working on taking care of cheats/hacks insted of patches :).

[Goob]

It has been said before somewhere....something funny that all the duping caused - ebay sellers basically lost their income with items like oculus rings being simply dropped in cow games.

[ManaCraft]

Blizzard should focus on defeating the hacks. They should not concern themselves with fixing this "economy."

Indeed. The cheats/hacks should be the very first thing on Blizzards list of priorities. Still, I don't believe there is anything that can be done for the realms at this point. Other than the fact that v1.10 will introduce ladder playing, I doubt there is anything that could possibly lure me back to battle.net.


ManaCraft

[Archon_Wing]

Well, you see, using SOJs as the currency is just the same way money goes in real life, you trade for them even if you aren't going to use them on your characters, but because you KNOW other people value these.

Same thing whith money, the paper and coin is useless to you as a material, but as a worth, it has it, when you go and buy a loaf of bread for a dollar, you really dont need a piece of paper and need some bread, while the other guy gives you the bread because he knows he can get something else for a dollar..... and on and on it goes......

Yes, Soj's can be considered like money. But there's one reason why you can't compare it to the currency we use IRL.

If 95% of the money circulating in our economy was counterfeit, would that economy work?

The SOJ could have been considered currency if the majority of them had been legit.

Does your dollar bill suddenly go away? And yes, they can delete duped Soj's

So, yea there is an Soj economy. But it was a bad one to begin with, and duping destroyed its credibility.

[Conner Macleod]

Archon, I can answer why I care without reading the rest of the thread! LOL.

The only reason I care about the value of the soj dropping is because I worked hard (if you can call playtime hard work) to get what I collected. With what I collected, I can help make a player's day by buying their 40 pgems or whatever crafting supplies I seem to be missing at the time. As a now veteran player, I can concentrate on the more fun things in the game like improving my character's abilities and gear through the purchase of raw materials and cubing fun new weapons/gear.

Because I am not a duper/cheater, and 40-80% of Battle.net users used that stupid hack/dupe program, they destroyed my playing experience. (I used to laugh at Blizz using "playing experience" in their hack warning, it always sounded so official.) Because the base currency of the game has been devalued so much, my sojs now buy 1/4th of what they used to be able to buy because people are laundering sojs for Pgems/Runes/Legit Items.

The sellers are not stupid, they know that there are a plethora of sojs available, and they know people are desperate to get rid of their dupes, hence the players like me cannot buy anything the old fashioned way - 40 Pgems for 1 soj. I would exhaust my supply of sojs just to get Pgems. Unfortunately, the largest supporters of the dupers are the former poor players who have marked up their wares while taking the big risk that the sojs will eventually disappear.

The funny thing about this whole thing is that I think it destroyed that stupid invisible Caste system that was in place for so long. Everyone now has sojs, nobody is in need of them, and now the laundering of these sojs for PDSCs has begun. I'm most upset because no NEW currency has been decided upon, so I am fearful of trading with anything until I know what it is! ARGH! I'm confused! I'm frustrated! And worse yet, I have a desire for a new Cruel Mat Bow and no Pgems to play with so I'm BORED! :(

[Griselda]

Everyone now has sojs, nobody is in need of them

Funny, I've played on the realms for years, and I've never had a SOJ. (OK, so I played quite a bit less when you could still gamble them)

I feel that any participation, no matter how small, in an economy that exists because of dupes is supporting the dupers.

-Griselda

[the Langolier]

I feel that any participation, no matter how small, in an economy that exists because of dupes is supporting the dupers.

Agreed.

<moved from another post:>
IMO, the old economy of closed realm play was completely cheated. I have never even found ONE SOJ. I am sure that is true for many others as well. Obviously the multiple SOJ's flowing through the realms are dupes. And yet trading through this system isn't cheating? In order to use this system legitimately (so to speak), one would have to actually find multiple SOJ's - and then use them to trade for some arbitrary item you seek. I can garuntee that had the old SOJ economy been legit, it would never even have existed in the first place.

[Naddybear]

This is a bit of a non sequitur, but...

I came back to Diablo after a long hiatus, and as i leveled my new java past Blood Moor, i checked the fora and learned of the duping. So i resigned myself to not trading at all. Not that i ever did much trading, i played in a regular grp and we gave each other stuff on a "most useful for..." basis. But all my old crew had stopped playing. Anyway with no twinking and no trading, i ended up accumulating a ton of decent gear: Stormshield, Shaftstop, Hellslayer, etc.

The non trade issue really hit hard when i was lvl 70 and still didnt have Titan's. I could have traded for it easily--Titan's is dirt cheap these days, not necessarily because they have been duped, but due to a combo i think of being in a low treasure class and the overall drop in the value of SoJs as you said. My one legit SoJ could have gotten me Titan's + Thundergod's Vigor. (The best offer i received.) But i declined. And after a billion Hell Meph runs, when it finally dropped, that was the best drop i have ever experienced in Diablo. Stormshield and Shaftstop were also very nice, as was Lightsaber.

So, yeah, the value of things is all out of whack on BNet. But as a result, if you dont trade, the value of things is heightened for an individual player i think.

This isnt just about, putting a positive spin on things. Really, even if SoJs still had value, do you think an accurate economy would be better than not trading? Because, even without duping, *that* many players doing *that* many MF runs, no item will be scarce. Not playing very much with no trading it was not hard for me to find a lot of high end gear. It would be easy for any but the most casual player to outfit himself in his ideal uber setup in no time, if he traded even in a legit economy. I think that takes a lot of fun away from the game.

[NuurAbSaal]

I couldn't agree more.
I play Single Player only now and it took me more than a week of heavy playing just to get a basic MF setup for my Barb so I could begin searching for the rarer items in the game. After about two weeks of Mfing I have found two elite uniques, Wizardspike and the Blackoak Shield. Both are essentially useless to me but finding them was a nice experience anyway. By the way, Nightmare Meph drops Titan's every 20th time for me, got a nice 195%/9% one :P

Single Player has the advantage of removing any tempation to trade for stuff, which at the same time is of course a nasty disadvantage. Just try to find a perfect Stealskull all by yourself (one found after mb 200 700% MF Meph runs,42% MF :( :P

For me, Diablo has always been about finding stuff, not trading for it. And yes, I used to play online :)
Even without duping, etc. finding would be immensly more rewarding than trading, don't you agree?

Greetings
Nuur

P.S.: just don't get me started on finding Runes in SP :lol:

[Occhidiangela]

When a Paladin of mine recently defeated Diablo in NM, Titan's dropped. How nice. :) On the other hand, Murphy lives.

I hung on to it, figuring I would pass it on to a friendly zon, but the Paladin's untimely demise took the Titan's away.

Easy come, easy go.