08 Jun, 2012, quixadhal wrote in the 41st comment:
Votes: 0
Regardless of your opinion on how the buying or selling of items affects the gameplay, *I* would much rather see MMO's doing the buying and selling themselves, rather than having people go through third parties. It will happen. It has happened in every MMO from Ultima Online to whatever the newest thing is now. In fact, I've even seen gold spam in closed BETA sessions on several games.

At least when it is done via the company themselves, they can see how the numbers go and adjust the balance accordingly. They can ALSO bring down the hammer on third party sellers much more harshly, since they are losing out doubly on such underground transactions.

Denouncing the practice as "evil" and sticking your head in the sand is a good way to find yourself in the same situation the RIAA is in these days. Had they jumped on the idea of mp3's, they could be rolling in dough AND be seen as a huge force of advancement for the industry, but instead they fought it tooth-and-nail, and after a few grandmothers and 4-year-old's got sued, they are now scrabbling on the shirttails of Apple, and considered a laughing stock by most.
08 Jun, 2012, KaVir wrote in the 42nd comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
If it is a server-side exploit, I expect it'll get stealth-patched. I've seen a few people speculating that it may even have been addressed in the latest update, but of course there's no way to know.

Prior to the last patch, I saw around 30-40 people per day complaining about being "hacked" (many of those posts were deleted shortly afterwards, so there could have been more).

Since then, I've seen a grand total of 3 new complaints on the subject, all of which said they hadn't logged on for several days (i.e., before the patch). I find it hard to chalk that up to coincidence.

While the important thing is that they've fixed it, the developer in me would love to know what it was. Some curious new bugs have begun to surface (including a way to crash other people's games), but accessing other peoples characters is more serious and IMO more interesting.

It's also got me thinking about security in muds. I once had a rather amusing bug in God Wars II where if you dropped link and reconnected, and there was a mob with the same name as you, you'd take control of the mob instead of your old body. But I don't ever recall an issue of character theft that didn't involve the normal login process (and I've added code to prevent brute force guessing).

Runter said:
Hey, your 60 dollar investment might be able to get some returns. Maybe even pay for the game itself after a few hundred hours.

Personally I have my doubts about regular players making much money, as they'll be competing against bots and professional gold farmers. However as a social experiment I'm quite interested to see what happens.
08 Jun, 2012, Kline wrote in the 43rd comment:
Votes: 0
I agree that people will buy/sell/trade virtual goods no matter what. Everyone knows it already happens, and I personally would rather see it controlled by the game developer in a secure manner (even if they do take a cut) rather than going through (what could be) a third party with no incentives to not royally screw me. It does place Blizzard on a slippery slope, though. By supporting the RMAH you are essentially paying Blizzard to be allowed to work. You had to pay to get in the door (buy the game), work to get the goods for sale (farm gold or items), and then give them a cut of any return you make by selling the goods you worked for. Doesn't sound like my cup of tea.

Also, I suspect there will be a lot more scrutiny of the company once it goes live, as they'll be holding cash-equivalent balances for many people and acting as a psuedo-bank/brokerage like PayPal; and I'm sure everyone knows how much PayPal cares about customers having fair and timely access to their funds. To further the mess, they treat your money as "Battle.net Currency" and will only allow you to spend it on "items they specify" (which so far specifically excludes WoW subscriptions, which I could see working the RMAH being a free monthly WoW ticket for a lot of people). If you don't want to buy they plush toys or other merchandise and choose to cash out (to PayPal only!), they take another cut on top of what they already took on the auction sale itself. Letting a company double-dip my proceeds after I had to pay them to work to make those proceeds in the first place? Looks like a crummy pyramid scheme turned virtual with a shiny bow on it.
09 Jun, 2012, Runter wrote in the 44th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
Also, I suspect there will be a lot more scrutiny of the company once it goes live, as they'll be holding cash-equivalent balances for many people and acting as a psuedo-bank/brokerage like PayPal; and I'm sure everyone knows how much PayPal cares about customers having fair and timely access to their funds. To further the mess, they treat your money as "Battle.net Currency" and will only allow you to spend it on "items they specify" (which so far specifically excludes WoW subscriptions, which I could see working the RMAH being a free monthly WoW ticket for a lot of people). If you don't want to buy they plush toys or other merchandise and choose to cash out (to PayPal only!), they take another cut on top of what they already took on the auction sale itself. Letting a company double-dip my proceeds after I had to pay them to work to make those proceeds in the first place? Looks like a crummy pyramid scheme turned virtual with a shiny bow on it.


They shouldn't have any problems in most countries. (Although they have said they won't be allowing RMAH in some.) It appears paypal will be holding any monies payable the entire time. Which, inarguably, they have the ability to do under most (all?) jurisdictions. This prevents any problem with blizzard is holding cash equivalent balances. They'd have no responsibility to have regulatory oversight in that regard on those funds. That's really the legal problem, not that they have cash equivalent balances. Actually, this is no different than any transferrable-refundable premium currency any number of social games have been doing for 15 or so years. The legalities are bulletproof, although, expect it to be widely speculated that they aren't. People have an interest in muddying the water simply because they don't like the base idea. If blizzard wanted to they could make the currency non-refundable. Then people would trade something that could never go back to cash. That wouldn't satisfy the critics, they'd angle shoot for another reason to naysay. But it would take the debate, at the expense of players, off the table, and would also give them more profits since the currency could never be converted back to cash.
09 Jun, 2012, Kline wrote in the 45th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
They shouldn't have any problems in most countries. (Although they have said they won't be allowing RMAH in some.) It appears paypal will be holding any monies payable the entire time. Which, inarguably, they have the ability to do under most (all?) jurisdictions. This prevents any problem with blizzard is holding cash equivalent balances.

Where did you read this? I'm not disputing it, just genuinely curious as I haven't heard that yet. Last I read you were essentially trading money for Battle.net currency until you decide to cash-out (refund?), at which point you are stuck using PayPal.

As with the "rampant" hacking people are also speculating over the AH. Yes, Blizzard has stated they do not sell/inject items/manipulate the AH. How does anyone really know, though? What's to prevent artificially controlling prices? They already essentially do this by manipulating loot drop rates. Everything is being at least somewhat devalued when 1.0.3 hits because they have stated higher level drops are going be more frequent between Hell Act IV through Inferno. While people are still stuck with the RNG giving them crappy rolls on an item, we should start seeing higher level items of better quality in general showing up more after the patch.
09 Jun, 2012, wifidi wrote in the 46th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
But using inferior equipment, or no weapon, or no active skills, etc, just reduces your effectiveness, it doesn't increase the difficulty of the game itself.
I'm late in thanking you for writing such a definitive comment about many games. Specific to Diablo III, are real money'ed items visibly different? Sooner or later game companies will sell "freeze dungeon" spells, massive dragon characters or being able to play as Diablo's twin brother, and get real people in trouble.
09 Jun, 2012, KaVir wrote in the 47th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
It appears paypal will be holding any monies payable the entire time. Which, inarguably, they have the ability to do under most (all?) jurisdictions. This prevents any problem with blizzard is holding cash equivalent balances.

They explain it here: http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/...

"Every real-money auction house will offer players the ability to store auction earnings in their Battle.net Balance up to the maximum permitted Battle.net Balance. As an advanced feature, players in certain regions will have the additional option to have the proceeds paid to their PayPal account instead of storing the earnings in their Battle.net Balance. Players must choose which method they wish to use prior to posting an auction, on a per-auction basis."

Runter said:
If blizzard wanted to they could make the currency non-refundable. Then people would trade something that could never go back to cash.

The big sellers want cash, if they couldn't get it through the RMAH then all the best (and most expensive) gear would be sold through third party "black market" sites - as would the best gold prices.

Blizzard takes a 27.75% cut before the money leaves Battle.net, so they stand to make a lot of money if they can control most of the sales. In fact I suspect they could probably have given out Diablo III for free instead of charging $60, and still made a decent profit.

wifidi said:
Specific to Diablo III, are real money'ed items visibly different?

No, this isn't a pay-for-perks system where the game is selling gear directly, instead they've set up the infrastructure for the players to sell gold and (randomly generated) gear, then they charge a sort of "tax" - 15% for each transaction, and another 15% to withdraw the money from Battle.net.

So for example if you sell a magic sword for $100, Blizzard takes $15 and the remaining $85 is sent to your Battle.net account, where you can spend it on other Blizzard products (or to buy more items). If you want to move that money to your PayPal account then Blizzard takes another $12.75, and the remaining $72.25 is added to your PayPal balance.


On a related note, I recently this video of Lineage Eternal. Looks rather Diablo-esk, but much prettier, and more "epic". It's also a full MMO instead of being limited to 4 simultaneous players like D3.

I'm also keeping an eye on Torchlight II, which is more cartoony, but otherwise feels more like I'd expected Diablo III to be (which isn't surprising really, the Torchlight II team developed Diablo and Diablo II). It's also pretty good value at $20 (which includes a free copy of the original Torchlight), and you can buy a 4-pack for $60. I'm planning to split it with some friends, $15 each.
09 Jun, 2012, Ssolvarain wrote in the 48th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Blizzard takes a 27.75% cut before the money leaves Battle.net, so they stand to make a lot of money if they can control most of the sales. In fact I suspect they could probably have given out Diablo III for free instead of charging $60, and still made a decent profit.


The path of ultimate evil, once again. Greed is ugly.

Not only are they advocating and supporting the trade of real world monies for (effectively worthless) items, they're profiting on top of it.
09 Jun, 2012, Runter wrote in the 49th comment:
Votes: 0
Oh no, somewhere in the world a company is providing a service to users that want it and making profit. Something must be done. /sarcasm
09 Jun, 2012, Ssolvarain wrote in the 50th comment:
Votes: 0
Pretty soon you'll be sporting a nice pair of new clothes, too.
09 Jun, 2012, KaVir wrote in the 51st comment:
Votes: 0
Another video, this one discussing the difficulty curve, and IMO it's some interesting food for thought for mud development as well:

10 Jun, 2012, hollis wrote in the 52nd comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Another video, this one discussing the difficulty curve, and IMO it's some interesting food for thought for mud development as well:


Interesting video, and I agree with the main sentiment, but I can't help but feel this video is incredibly misleading for two reasons 1) rose-tinted glasses when looking back to Diablo 2, and 2) sensationalist argument rather than an argument founded on data and objective observation. Some quotes from the video and my comments:

Quote
"Normal is insanely simple, allowing the average player to autopilot to the end of the game. Nightmare and hell certainly get harder, but not much changes in the way of mechanics" (0:33)


Agreed. This is terrible. Right now I am bored in act 3 inferno. I keep contemplating rolling new characters, but I know I'll be just as bored, but in a different way. I think it is worth pointing out, though, that the same issue existed with normal difficulty in D2. There were notable differences, however. One such difference is that in D2 you could get through normal and onto nightmare in about 2-3 hours (with waypoints), whereas there is a much larger time investment in D3.

Quote
"As of this video, there is a barbarian with arguably the best gear in the world who is stuck on Act 3" (1:21)


Given that there are barbarians with worse gear having cleared inferno already, the above point is meaningless. From the statement above, there is no way to decide if the barbarian being referred to is just a really terrible player, or if the barbarians who have cleared act 4 are incredibly good. There is probably a case to be made that "there is an unrealistic gap between the gear that is attainable and the gear that is necessary for inferno right now", and probably what the author is trying to get at, but the above point does nothing to that argument other than move it away from an argument grounded in data to an argument grounded in sensationalism.

Quote
"In Diablo 3, inferno attacks you with so many 1-hit kills that it cheapens the experience. By act 4 of inferno, it isn't uncommon for an enemy to do more than 100,000 points of damage to you in a single hit" (1:50)


This is a meaningless evidence. 100,000 points of damage in what context? What are your resistances and mitigation? Are you playing a glass cannon build, or a full tank build? How much effort has been put into gathering gear? More information is required to interpret the presented evidence. My squishiest character in act 3 (not act 4) is a Demon Hunter with 50k health, 56% armor, and 50% resists. There is nothing that 1-shots me, but there are quite a few things that will 2-shot me. Yes, I agree this is still an incredibly cheapened experience and frustrating more often than it is fun. However, it seems like the author is just trying to convince viewers of this with a bunch of fancy handwaving. That cheapens his argument.

Worth pointing out, I also have a monk in act 3 inferno. The monk is incredibly fun to play and very viable in every context except for elites with molten/fire chains. He can withstand about 2-3 seconds of condensed, direct fire (55k health, 72% armor, 72% resist, 50% dodge), but he also has crowd-dispersing abilities (dragon tail kick) which means he never really has to take consed fire.

Quote
"In Diablo 2, we were given the skills and methods to destroy anything in the game whenever we wanted to" (2:23)


It's been about a year since I played Diablo 2, but this just seems flat-out wrong. I actually remember needing very specific items and/or runewords to be able to make progress (specific difficulty checkpoints were hell act 1, hell act 4, worldstone keep). Does anyone have input one way or another? One thing that did distinguish Diablo 2 from Diablo 3 was that being undergreared rarely meant you were 1-shot (except for maybe in the worldstone keep). Rather, what it meant was that you could not kill anything but could escape before you died. It was a much less punishing gear-check.

Quote
"[In Diablo 2] we didn't need to be able to grind for hundreds of hours to take a second hit" (2:29)


This is true, but you were still required to grind for hundreds of hours for other purposes. You needed to grind and grind for hundreds of hours to get specific items/runes. The more important distinction was that, In Diablo 2, you knew what you were griding for. In Diablo 3, it is not as obvious what you need / what will let you progress to a new act.

Quote
"[In Diablo 2] it was very rare to hear someone complain that just farming bosses for gear was boring" (2:35)


Does anyone remember Mephisto runs? Pindle runs? Baal runs? This stuff was mind-numbingly boring. It was a great time to catch up on TV but, man, Diablo 2 endgame was mind-numbing. If I had to guess, I'd say there is a "bigger" issue here. In Diablo 2, endgame was mind-numbingly boring, but the rewards felt better. Not because items were unique, but because *you knew exactly what you were hunting for going into the run*, and there was a very clear sense of satisfaction when you received an item on your list. It is constantly ambiguous in Diablo 3 whether or not an item is 1) exactly what you are looking for, 2) an upgrade or sidegrade, or 3) good for someone else, 4) good if you changed a few other pieces of gear along with it. This makes the rewards much less satisfying than they were in Diablo 2.

Quote
"[Diablo 3] has an incredibly shallow stat system that even the most inept person would have trouble following" (3:22)


I like game mechanics and alot of the time good decisions are just "obvious" to me, but I have numerous friends (who also play Diablo 3) for whom game mechanics are not as easy to grokk. My friends constantly complain to me that they cannot understand why some items have such a large difference in dps (the classic are items that swap your main stat for attack speed). They also make consistently poor decisions in terms of deciding between armor, resist, dodge, and life on hit. It is hard to argue the quoted claim one way or another without actually looking at whether or not the general population makes good or bad decisions when choosing new gear, but based on the constant frustration that my friends have with choosing good items, the claim just seems flat out wrong. I, personally, find the offense/defense stats make for mildly interesting decisions, but the bulk of the skill comes from the fact that you cannot always get "perfect" items and have to decide what the best of a bunch of sub-optimal decisions are going to be when selecting between gear.

Quote
"Diablo 3 isn't a bad game by any means. It is just an example of tunnel vision gone wrong" (3:48)


This I can agree with. I actually wonder if the D3 development team fell prey to groupthink. Seems like many of the antecedents are present.

I like Diablo 3. It's a cool game that very clearly still needs a ton of work. At inferno, I actually think it is the right level of difficulty, but it is difficult in the wrong ways: namely, it is very common to die for random and/or unpreventable reasons, and acquiring the gear you need to progress is far more important than creative gameplay.
11 Jun, 2012, quixadhal wrote in the 53rd comment:
Votes: 0
Yes, making money is evil. It's a good thing you have the internet… oh wait, that was funded by the department of defense for military applications LONG before you could hop on and whine about capitalism through it. :)
11 Jun, 2012, Kline wrote in the 54th comment:
Votes: 0
hollis said:
At inferno, I actually think it is the right level of difficulty, but it is difficult in the wrong ways: namely, it is very common to die for random and/or unpreventable reasons, and acquiring the gear you need to progress is far more important than creative gameplay.


I think this sums up most of my complaints. I still haven't farmed / found enough gear for my Monk to get past the Act II gear check (BEES!), so I've pretty much trying out the other classes (and finding some fun in it) and waiting for 1.0.3 to nerf the gear check.
11 Jun, 2012, KaVir wrote in the 55th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
Yes, making money is evil. It's a good thing you have the internet… oh wait, that was funded by the department of defense for military applications LONG before you could hop on and whine about capitalism through it. :)

I'm not sure if that's addressed at me, as you've not quoted any messages, but to clarify my stance I do not object to the idea of Blizzard making money from their game. I do however feel that Diablo 3 needs a lot more work before it's robust and stable enough for real money transactions. Blaming the customer while steath-patching the exploits just isn't going to cut it when people are losing stuff they've spent real $$$ on.
11 Jun, 2012, ATT_Turan wrote in the 56th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
I recently this video of Lineage Eternal. Looks rather Diablo-esk, but much prettier, and more "epic". It's also a full MMO instead of being limited to 4 simultaneous players like D3.

I'm also keeping an eye on Torchlight II, which is more cartoony, but otherwise feels more like I'd expected Diablo III to be (which isn't surprising really, the Torchlight II team developed Diablo and Diablo II). It's also pretty good value at $20 (which includes a free copy of the original Torchlight), and you can buy a 4-pack for $60. I'm planning to split it with some friends, $15 each.


There's also an MMO in beta called Path of Exile. When I played the earliest beta of it last year, I was unimpressed by the speed, difficulty and fluidity of combat, but it's been many months since then (I should probably check back in…). I find the gem/gear-based skill system to be a very neat idea.
12 Jun, 2012, Kline wrote in the 57th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
I do however feel that Diablo 3 needs a lot more work before it's robust and stable enough for real money transactions. Blaming the customer while steath-patching the exploits just isn't going to cut it when people are losing stuff they've spent real $$$ on.


Well, the Asian servers are already getting a confirmed rollback to deal with item and gold duping. The US forums are exploding with curiosity of if the US region will receive one too, as it's logical to assume a server-side exploit in one region would be present in all of them. Skimming a few widely known exploit forums seems to indicate this bug has been viable across all regions since launch and only recently (within the last few hours) stopped working in the US region, although Blizzard denies this. This will be fun to watch unfold.
12 Jun, 2012, Kline wrote in the 58th comment:
Votes: 0
Seems the AH gold duping was stealth-hotfixed.

Quoting it for posterity lest the original thread be deleted:
Quote
1. Log into your account
2. You join general chat
3. Leave general chat and log out
4. Log back in, and you don't join general chat anymore

This was a feature that was supposed to be implemented in a future patch with the future being anytime after 15 hours ago when it was posted.

This is the quote:
"In a future patch, we will be adding functionality so that if you leave General chat once, the game will remember this preference and not automatically re-join that channel whenever you next log in."

So if nothing was hotfixed, then how is this feature in the game already?
Stop trying to cover up everything you screw up and be accountable to the millions of players that spent their money on your game. This is my first blizzard game, and it will be my last. This company is a joke.


This makes some earlier comments quite a bit more likely and has certainly shifted my opinions from "nah, they wouldn't play such a big coverup game" to "well it seems they most likely are…"

KaVir said:
I've been watching the compromised accounts situation with some interest - more and more people claiming to have been "hacked", youtube videos of bots stripping accounts and selling their gear to the vender, etc. Whatever the cause, I can't help but feel it's going to seriously undermine confidence in the security of the game, and the real money auction house is due to open soon.

Blizzard insists there's no fault at their end, and blames it on keyloggers, phishing, etc. Perhaps they're right, perhaps not, but I can't help drawing parallels between this situation and the cross-realm password exploit in Diablo 2, which Blizzard also insisted was impossible, and blamed on the exact same things they're blaming now.

Blizzard claims that nobody with an authenticator has been compromised, so I watched with some interest as around 65-70 compromised players posted a breakdown of their individual situations, with 7 of them claiming to have been using authenticators. Yesterday a staff member said they'd investigate the claims, and this morning the entire thread had been deleted (not locked, but actually deleted).

I'm not a big fan of conspiracy theories, but based on everything I've seen and read it's really starting to look like some sort of server-side exploit.
12 Jun, 2012, KaVir wrote in the 59th comment:
Votes: 0
Kline said:
Seems the AH gold duping was stealth-hotfixed.

Interesting response from the community manager (Bashiok): http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5...

Quote
We haven't deployed any hot fixes this evening. As far as we can tell the supposed exploit never worked, but we'll continue looking into it. Yes, changing the system clock can change auction times, but that doesnt dupe gold. It's pretty easy to see how much gold people have, and we have no indication anyone has/had that much.


It's followed by another 23 pages of angry posts from people saying they saw it on livestream, or watched people doing it in person, etc.
12 Jun, 2012, Kline wrote in the 60th comment:
Votes: 0
Yeah, his response was a bit earlier in the night before the thread I linked above. About two hours prior or so I believe. Go skim the public sections of places like Blizzhacker, OwnedCore, etc…Most have threads about this with many comments stating it's been an open hole since launch day and the threads are only now on the public / non-member side of those sites since it got blown up so big, "hope you abused it when you could!"
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