Auction House

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Actively playing the AH since release should mean profits in the billions. Just playing the game and selling items actively since release should mean you have hundreds of millions. The hardcore crowd is way ahead.

 

That's the first thing I thought of. Seriously, most "avid gamers" are still relatively normal people - like most of us posting on these forums. Most of us have jobs, families, and other interests and things to do that consume our time. Sure, all of us game, but very few of us would be considered truly hard core gamers.

However, there is a small sub-set of the gaming population that game as if it were their jobs. They literally game for 8+ hours per day. And there are certainly people who have played Diablo like that from the time it was released up until now. So the super rare items that most gamers only find occassionally (like TGS 10.5 gold item he sold recently), these hard core guys have found dozens of items of similar value. So yeah, I can easily see that many of them have virtual gold bank accounts in the hundreds of millions, if not billions of gold.

 

Those gloves are not super rare, they are a pretty average to good item for a character starting to progress in act3 or so. Nowhere near top of the line. Gloves can carry some obscene offensive stats. In theory you could find a pair with a main dps stat, crit, crit dmg and haste and that would be pricey. The hardcore people probably find a few of those every day, the super rare are the ones with just the right stats and the maximum possible amount and those are the ones that goes for up to 100m. Just one more % of crit and haste could be the difference between a few millions and a few tens of millions.

 

Yeah. Never underestimate how much a PERFECT item can be worth to someone searching for such. Especially so if the stats combination is desirable to begin with. Just a mere point away from perfect is usually enough to halve the value, halve again for another and so forth until you reach some sort of a plateau of mediocre stat rolls where a few percent here or there doesn't change much at all.

 

The larger point here is that the hard core gamers are finding way more stuff than the typical gamer, and so can afford basically anything they want.

I saw a news article earlier this week, where a RMAH player announced that he has made in excess of $10,000 - that's real dollars - selling stuff since D3 came out. He said he's now made enough that he'll probably have to claim it as income on his taxes.

 

The RMAH is even more screwy than the regular AH. Still a pretty impressive accomplishment though.

 

I'd be interested if he does claim it as income. If he does, it would seem like he should be able to write off a portion of his living expenses as a "business expense". Kind of like people that have home offices. If 20% of your house is your home office, you can write off 20% of your electric bill as a business expense.

 

I would be interested to hear what the hourly pay would be. I doubt it would reach minimum wage.

 

I agree. But I doubt he's doing it strictly for the money. I think he's doing it because he likes the game, and if you can make a few bucks on the side doing it, why not? I mean, if you're playing the game anyway, there's really no downside. And considering he made $10K from a $60 game, that's a solid return on investment.

 

To make money from Diablo or any game you have to play it in a way that isn't really fun. We are talking grinding the same thing again and again thousands of times often not even playing the game but farming goblins or treasure chests for hours on end.

 

I'm curious, have any of the players here managed to even sell one thing on the real money auction house? I know I haven't.

 

Nope. Maybe when I finish the game I'll pay more attention to the RMAH, but right now I'm more concerned about improving my own character.

Ideally one might be able to auction off something in the RMAH and then use the cash to buy gold (for a hefty profit) but I don't trust those gold-selling websites.

 

I have not tried. I am ideologically opposed to the idea of the RMAH. That and it is one more step on Blizzard's descent since being acquired by Activision to turning into EA. Blizzard used to be so reliable, you knew that if bought a Blizzard product it would be top quality, it would be supported, it would be fun (within the genre) and you would get extreme value for your money. Blizzard is a long way from being bad yet, I still hold them in high esteem but I have noticed the beginning of the fall. They used to be about making kick ass products and the profit would follow now they are more and more about making a profit first and not relying on good products leading to long term profits.

 

Found a tricky looking ring, checked the stats on the new and improved AH. Expensive, very expensive. Put it up for 10m bid and 25m buy out. It sold for the bid. I immediately spent the gold on a new shiny legendary mace for 10m. No idea if I got screwed or not but it feels right. Its legendary property is a 15% chance of fear on hit and my initial act1 test leads me to believe that this could be very very useful.

The AH seems to have split now. Decent items cost literally nothing now, seems to be very few items in the range of 1-8m. There seems to be no progression between decent act1-2 items and good act3-4 items. I have noticed a sharp divide just where pretty much all my items are. Anything slightly worse is worth nothing and anything slightly better is very pricey. Don't even bother selling 800dps weapons now unless they have really good stats. Anything good cost in excess of eight million while you can find really decent stuff for next to nothing.

 

TBH, that has always been the case for me ever since a month after the game started. Call me stingy, but I'm very particular about the stuff I buy and its actual (practical) worth. I am not spending millions on an item that gives me a mere +30 stat increase or +100 dps (though I have bought some on occasion, friends can be annoying that way). If an item fits my build perfectly though then all bets are off. I've spent several tens of millions on bidding wars for items I consider top end for my build.

 

Necromancy time.

Blizzard's decision to kill the auction house, plus the supposedly improved looting system with the upcoming expansion, might actually make me want to play this game.

 

As far as I gather, the current loot system has very poor drops so you will likely never see anything more than decent drop. Thus making the auction house necessary for most people to be able to get more than just mediocre gear.

So now they're going to do what they did for the consoles and improve the drops and scratch the auction house. That might make things more interesting, as it would shift the gameplay from watching the auction house to actually playing the game. Except that the core gameplay is the same as the previous Diablo games: i.e. grinding, grinding, grinding.

It might make for more interesting gameplay than watching the auctions progress, but not enough to make me consider getting this game.

 

I stopped playing the game months ago. Gameplay was innovative but has grown stale and repetitive over time and story-wise/character-wise it's still the worst Diablo game in the series by far (massive retcon + epic fail decisions by almost all main characters). The new storyline looks like it was written by the guy who wrote the BG novels (I know many communities generally do not even acknowledge the existence of these books, but D3 story planning is just that bad).

Overall it's a decent action game but that's about it. That may change though, considering Blizzard and expansions.

 

That's exactly how I feel as well. I had zero interest in D3 before, but these changes might help. I'm at least a year away from buying the game, though (due in part to the number of games I already have on my purchased-but-unplayed list).