12 Jun, 2012, KaVir wrote in the 61st comment:
Votes: 0
Someone posted this: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5...

Quote
Player A puts item up on AH
Player B buys item
Player A takes out the gold from that transaction
Player B turns back the clock on his desktop by 2 days
Player B will get back the money he spent on the item, and player A will also have the money that was originally paid, thus duping the gold.


Whether that's true or not, I don't know. However what I did personally test was the following:

1. Put an item up for auction, wait for a day.
2. Change the date on my PC to a couple of days earlier.
3. Cancel the auction.

I can confirm that above worked, as long as I changed the date while Diablo was running. However there were no bids on my item, so all it did was end the auction early.
12 Jun, 2012, Kline wrote in the 62nd comment:
Votes: 0
Yeah, I've seen those steps. It's a 50/50 of people saying it did/does work. I know the "cancel your auction at any time, roll back your PC clock" is legit, and you've again confirmed this. The "scamming" and true exploit seems to be the following:
Quote
Player A puts item up on AH
Player B bids on item
Player A turns back the clock on his desktop by 2 days
Player A cancels the auction, receiving Player B's bid and his item
Player B is left with no item and no bid money returned


I want to say this actually happened to me, but I can not 100% confirm it. A week or two ago I bid on an item, was quickly outbid, so I rebid. Fast-forward a few hours and the auction still showed up in my bids list but said time "Expired". I don't remember ever receiving my money back from it.
13 Jun, 2012, Runter wrote in the 63rd comment:
Votes: 0
Just thought I'd mention that I've sold about $50 worth of items on diablo, mostly just 50 cents profit here and there, with my biggest auction being $10 on a ring since the RMAH opened yesterday. I've been doing it very leisurely just with items that look good that I find but don't want. It's anecdotal, but I think every day players who aren't bots or professionals may be able to make a few bucks selling items they find.
13 Jun, 2012, KaVir wrote in the 64th comment:
Votes: 0
The EU auction house hasn't opened yet, and I can't use the US one. But it'll certainly be nice if I can recover the cost of the game.
13 Jun, 2012, Kline wrote in the 65th comment:
Votes: 0
Tomorrow will be my first change to play due to my work schedule. I hopped on about 15 minutes before servers dropped for more maintenance at 5 PDT today and I was honestly shocked at how many items are listed for the bare minimum ($1.25). With the flat $1 listing fee it's only pennies of profit to whoever sold it, but I'm talking fairly decent Magic/Rare items that are listing otherwise for 250k - 1mil on the gold AH. I'll have to take a closer look tomorrow morning when I get off work, because it's more efficient time:money wise for me to spend $1.25 to get a 1200-1300 dps 2H over the time investment to farm enough gold for that. Oddly enough Blizzard seems to have set the floor at $2.50/mil for gold, but I didn't get a chance to look at that yet before the servers dropped.
14 Jun, 2012, Runter wrote in the 66th comment:
Votes: 0
It appears all commodity (including gold) auctions have been disabled since before the RMAH was patched in.

I haven't bought anything from the RMAH (not sure I will). Only been selling, but I have sold a number of items for the minimum 1.25 for that 25 cent profit. Maybe I should rethink that, but because other people are willing to ultimately I won't be able to sell an item for 2 dollars if other items of the same quality are being sold for 1.25. I think that's perhaps the driving rationale behind it. And a lot of time in the gold auctionhouse the market value is rarely obtained. A lot of the items on there are overpriced and overstock. Rarely do they actually sell for what people are listing them. (250k - 1mil).

Based on the chinese gold farmer index, inflation stands at about 9 dollars/ Million gold. By that conversion you could expect $2.25 for something listed in the gold AH at 250k. I think this should be a driving force for more inflation and that the value of gold on the black market will drop further to match the $1.25 rate soon. And just for reference, the price of gold 2 weeks ago was 15 dollars/million. A few days after opening day it was 40 dollars/million. I doubt there's any end in sight, but without a doubt some of the bugs (like the infinite quest complete) have put too much illegitimate gold into the economy. Blizzard increased repair rates by a factor of 6, probably to try to take some gold out.

I would propose blizzard taxes higher gold transactions at higher rates if they want to target illegitimate gold. Should also help with inflation at the same time as people will be less likely to sell for a higher price. They don't need use brackets. can use a formula like 15% + 0.1%/10,000. Wouldn't have the problem of people trying to sell right under the brackets.
14 Jun, 2012, Kline wrote in the 67th comment:
Votes: 0
Yes, commodities are disabled but there are screenshots of people attempting to list gold for sale and receiving an error over the minimum price before it blocks them from posting it.

I realize gold is on the steady decline, but Blizzard did cap it at an artificial minimum (for now) once they allow the sale of it. The repair factor was noted to be increased to discourage body hopping to bypass content, which I believe. The fact that it creates a gold sink is just brownie points. Given repair costs were far too low, anyhow. There was zero incentive to not die 10 times until your gear is broken when it only costs < 10k to fix it all up; that's peanuts.

Also: epic troll, or security hole? http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5...
14 Jun, 2012, Runter wrote in the 68th comment:
Votes: 0
Actually, I don't think that artificial cap will do anything. People who want gold in specific may pay a premium price, but the market value for gold won't be based on what the actual trading value of gold is in the RMAH. Because even without the ability to buy and sell gold on the AH you could transfer across the two just from equipment alone. It may just be considered a hedge by blizzard to help fight inflation, but it won't be a minimum value as long as players have any access to gold in any way at cheaper prices. Even the black market will be a determining factor.

And because most of the gold sold on the black market was from hacked accounts they won't be able to actually sell it within the system. Blizzard puts a 72 hour hold for review on sales I'm assuming to make sure these people aren't able to use the system at all. That means they'll still be around for a while, but I suspect their business will sharply drop off and they'll almost have to give away the gold. Blizzard will in turn crack down more harshly on players who deal in the black market, word will get out, and players will determine that it's better just to use the same in-game system. It's likely this will have a positive effect on the black market, because their efforts will be vastly better spent on other games as it becomes difficult for them to even move the product the have. And the point of hacking accounts in diablo for gold may become less obvious, resulting in less attempts to steal players diablo 3 gold by these companies.
14 Jun, 2012, Kline wrote in the 69th comment:
Votes: 0
Not all of it is from hacked / scammed accounts. Botting is a very viable and lucrative system, especially since Warden was not activated until last week. Botters pretty much had a full unrestricted month to bot, farm, and exploit a lot of issues. That's a lot of easy gold that's been stockpiled. The black market trading won't ever go away, people will just become more cautious with it. Diablo 2 still has a huge black market. These folks are proficient at what they do and know how to launder virtual currency extremely well. Hell, look at WoW, you can purchase a bot-leveled new account with one character at 85 for like $40. WoW and Warden have been around a lot longer and people are still botting the hell out of it successfully. The bots that get caught are the ones that are well known and marketed to home users / players. The best ones are kept secret and stay that way.

Just skimming over threads at OwnedCore I am amazed at what these people will do to try and claim fraudulent hack attempts or more viably launder virtual goods. Suggestions as far as establishing a normal playing pattern, leaving the account alone for a week (vacation? business trip?), and then logging in from a foreign VPN, doing password changes, dumping items / etc, then filing a hacked report from the regular address. I've seriously started to lose faith in Blizzard due to all the "problems" since D3 has launched, and I don't have a lot of faith in their ability to control a RMAH. Maybe it's just me, but I expect a good bit of transparency from any company I'm handling cash transactions through. The current UI hides so many details about both the seller and buyer, and they still do not have a stable server farm, and are still taking the entire farm (game, ah, and all) offline frequently outside of normal maintenance times without any explanation. I think the servers have been temporarily down both yesterday and today for "scheduled" maintenance that included no advance warning or even follow-up information. How shafted would someone be if they were trying to play the market and carefully watch bids and auction times to lose out on something due to this? They haven't been able to deliver a stable basic gaming experience since launch and I think the RMAH shouldn't have opened until all of the performance and security issues were seen to. I have more faith that a highly recommended "black market" independent trader will safely and securely deliver merchandise over the official platform we have now. Even if an auction is reversed there seems to be no explanation sent to either the buyer or seller as to why it was cancelled.
14 Jun, 2012, Runter wrote in the 70th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
I have more faith that a highly recommended "black market" independent trader will safely and securely deliver merchandise over the official platform we have now.


The black market is practically synonymous with the cheating you described. And even worse, hacking of accounts to fund the selling of gold. Very little of it is obtained legitimately. The real money auction house is the key to shutting the black market down. Shutting black market down == shutting down most of the incentive to hack accounts since most of them are done by these 3rd party resellers.

And btw, those "highly recommended" traders often use exploits to try to compromise the very users that visit their websites and buying from them. Getting information here and there so they can circumvent the authenticator through support. Like phone number, billing information, address, IP, etc.
14 Jun, 2012, Kline wrote in the 71st comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
The real money auction house is the key to shutting the black market down.

I don't believe so. People will always find a way to bypass official channels for any reason. The "Blizzard Tax" is just one. If Blizzard was truly only interested in providing a safe and secure platform to officiate player to player trading then they would not charge fees; at least not on the RMAH side. As it stands now, it's the ultimate micro-transaction cash cow. I even think the fees would be a bit more palatable if you weren't dinged twice. IE: If you want to keep your proceeds in Blizzard Bucks, lop off 15%. If you want to keep them in PayPal instead, lop off 15%. None of the flat $1 for items and getting dinged twice on commodities for choosing to cash out.

Runter said:
And btw, those "highly recommended" traders often use exploits to try to compromise the very users that visit their websites and buying from them. Getting information here and there so they can circumvent the authenticator through support. Like phone number, billing information, address, IP, etc.

I'm not suggesting "fill in the form, wait for your goods" websites so much as forums. d2jsp was (and still is) huge and trusted, but it's just a forum where your worth is your reputation. Private party transactions between two individuals, not entering your details into a corporate Chinese farmer site.
14 Jun, 2012, KaVir wrote in the 72nd comment:
Votes: 0
So if I understand this correctly…

To use the real money auction house you need an authenticator (which is $6.50, or free if you have a smartphone that can use the app). This allows you to sell things for Blizzard Bucks - Blizzard takes of $1 for an item, or 15% for a commodity, and the remainder can be used for buying D3 gear/gold or other Blizzard products.

If you want to transfer the money to PayPal, you also need SMS Protect, which isn't available for all phone packages or network providers, and may also incur additional fees for each SMS. In this case, PayPal charges an additional 15%.

I've no intention of buying anything, but I'd rather been hoping to make back the cost of the game. Problem is my BattleNET account lists me as a UK resident (I used my UK credit card to purchase the game, as I wanted it in English), but my mobile phone has a German number, so I can't sign up for SMS Protect. I could probably change it, but it's a lot of effort, and my PayPal account is also set up for my UK address and bank (I don't actually have a German credit card, so I'm not sure if I could even validate my PayPal account were I to change the country).

How often does SMS Protect send you text messages? Would it be viable for me to give the number of a friend or family member in the UK?
15 Jun, 2012, Kline wrote in the 73rd comment:
Votes: 0
I don't believe you need an authenticator to use the RMAH, only to "add to your Battle.net Balance": http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5...

So you should be able to subsist on selling items and only spending what you've sold without any issue.

You are correct with SMS Protect in regards to PayPal, though, and it also does not seem to work on prepaid phones. I haven't tried testing if it works with Google Voice numbers, as that's what I primarily use myself. Only close family has my legitimate cell # for real emergencies if Google Voice's forwarding stuff is down / etc. I've never used the SMS Protect stuff myself, so I'm honestly not sure what it does. I think I read a few threads of people saying it messaged them like twice per purchase or something.
16 Jun, 2012, Runter wrote in the 74th comment:
Votes: 0
I'm very upset about this SMS protection. I'm not going to be able to "cash out" my money from the RMAH. Firstly, I'm in singapore and my account is US. Which means I'd need a US phone number, but an even bigger problem is they require it to be a phone with contract. Apparently prepaid phones don't work. So even if I were able to use my phone number in singapore on my prepaid phone, it wouldn't be good enough. I'm sort of shocked and appalled that they only allow contract phones to use their SMS protect. I didn't even know they had the ability to discriminate in that way.
16 Jun, 2012, KaVir wrote in the 75th comment:
Votes: 0
It looks like you can change your D3 country of residence by sending Blizzard a scan of your passport and a utility bill.

PayPal would require creating a new account, which I've done, but unfortunately it refuses to let me connect it to my German bank account. I'd have to call them and argue about it, and I hate speaking German on the phone.

However my dad plays D3 as well now, so I might ask him to set up a PayPal account so that he can convert my Blizzard Bucks into real cash.
16 Jun, 2012, Runter wrote in the 76th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
It looks like you can change your D3 country of residence by sending Blizzard a scan of your passport and a utility bill.

PayPal would require creating a new account, which I've done, but unfortunately it refuses to let me connect it to my German bank account. I'd have to call them and argue about it, and I hate speaking German on the phone.

However my dad plays D3 as well now, so I might ask him to set up a PayPal account so that he can convert my Blizzard Bucks into real cash.


Even if I did all that I would still have the problem that they require you to have a non-prepaid phone, which I haven't had in years.
16 Jun, 2012, KaVir wrote in the 77th comment:
Votes: 0
An authenticator is enough to earn Blizzard Bucks. Do you know someone you trust who plays D3 and has their account connected to PayPal? If so, get them to put up a piece of junk for sale, buy it off them with your Blizzard Bucks, and get them to forward you the money.
16 Jun, 2012, Kline wrote in the 78th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
An authenticator is enough to earn Blizzard Bucks. Do you know someone you trust who plays D3 and has their account connected to PayPal? If so, get them to put up a piece of junk for sale, buy it off them with your Blizzard Bucks, and get them to forward you the money.

You beat me to it ;)

Yeah, just have them list a garbage item for the balance of your Blizz Bucks, buy it, and have them "personal gift" you the remainder. You'll only take the $1 Blizzard tax and the 15% PayPal tax, but avoid additional PayPal taxes incurred by "purchases".
17 Jun, 2012, Runter wrote in the 79th comment:
Votes: 0
Well, it may not work without risk. At least not with an obvious trash item. Blizzard reviews all transactions with human eyes before the money goes through. Regardless, circumventing their security policy doesn't sound like a good way to go about it.
17 Jun, 2012, KaVir wrote in the 80th comment:
Votes: 0
I don't really see how Blizzard could stop you. Not do I see why they'd want to.

The security policy is primarily there to protect them from a legal perspective. As long as they're transferring the money to verified accounts, I don't think they care what happens to it afterwards.
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