Diablo III’s Real-World Money Auction House Now Live!
If you’ve been playing Diablo III like a crazy person, and have amassed a wealth of loot that you believe is worth billions, now’s the time to prove it. Blizzard has just announced that their real-world money auction house is officially open in the Americas. For all the details on how to partake in the fun, click their official rules and regulations page here. This link leads to another page that explains how the auction house works. You’ll have to have one of those fancy Battle.net authenticators in order to sell anything. It’s all explained in the links above. Now excuse me as I go back to ordering parts for my new computer…
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Anyone here know the facts on this? You’ve made me quite curious Pat lol. I love this concept though, so long as it doesn’t break the game, which it really shouldn’t here because of level caps on weapons, etc. It’s not like someone can pay $10,000 and buy the most powerful weapon and use it right away. That’s one thing I like about Blizzard’s handling of loot in this series.
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I got the info Pat. Here it is:
“Blizzard will charge a flat fee of $1 (or a rough local equivalent) for sales of unique equipment like armor, weapons, and accessories, or take a 15 percent cut for sales of common, “stackable” commodities like gems, materials, and gold. Sellers will be faced with an additional 15 percent fee if they want the purchase price to be transferred to a third-party service like PayPal.”
So bottom line is, at most Blizzard will take 30%, which is what Apple takes from all Apps on the App Store, in other words, it’s not that bad.
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Actually Ahmed this is one of the most requested feature in the Diablo community right now. Many fans were extremely disappointed to learn that the real-world money auction house wasn’t up when the game launched. Blizzard also has a ton of safety features built in and they moderate the auction house like crazy to ensure there’s no scamming taking place. You have to have a authenticator attached to your account just to sell anything. They also closed hundreds of thousands of accounts that had bots collecting cash, etc. So they’re trying to do their part.
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#6 written by Stephane Fortier 11 months ago
You would be surprised how many people we’re waiting for this feature alot of gear people had acquired didn’t show up on the normal auction house or with good enough stats.
Already you have people putting up items for 250$ and you know what some have been sold, honestly thats paying the game 5 times over or even buying 5 new games.
A friend of mine actually tested it out and sold something really crappy for 15$.
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I’m actually VERY surprised by the comments here. People want this? Seriously? Why? This is like the stupidest idea ever. Well…if people like to spend 250$ on a virtual item…I bet it’s the American economy that’s driving everyone to demand this feature. Make a quick buck with virtual items. Seriously?
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It’s actually nothing new Ahmed, it has been done many times before and proven to be extremely popular. In the case of Diablo, this is a game that is designed around the concept of loot. You keep revisiting dungeons in other people’s games for the purpose of collecting that one extra rare item. Once you’re satisfied with your current equipment, typically you trade off your other stuff to other players, but this allows for another form of trading, selling. It’s honestly that simple. Like I said, right now I’m playing D2 and have TONS of stuff I don’t really need anymore. I can either trade that with people on Battle.net or sell it to them (hypothetically speaking of course since D2 doesn’t have an auction house). That’s very appealing because what else am I going to do with all this stuff?
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The concept of selling may sound appealing indeed, but actually buying them with real world money? Never thought that there would be a big audience for that. I know that the concept is nothing new particularly when you talk about some MMORPGs. But I never expected that people want it that badly for Diablo III is all. A lot of iPhone games do that this kind of stuff phoned in, too…and I just never saw the appeal of buying a virtual item with real world money, unless it comes packed in with more DLC content in one cheap package, you know.
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#12 written by Stephane Fortier 11 months ago
Yeah i understand what you meen. I particularly prefer farming with my friends and a legendary item falling down and be like OMG and finding out what it is thats why i enjoy the game. I tend to sometimes have to look for new gear in the AH when i can’t seem to get anything new but using real money for an item isn’t something i find appealing, selling probly tho!
But people will pay for them and its not surprising because for D3 some people tend to want to take the easy way out rather than enjoying the game!!!
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#14 written by AppetitePat 11 months ago
I had a friend which back in the D2 days would ask me to buy stuff for him since he didn’t own a credit card. He would go to this site which sold various items including runes or whatever.
Point is, I seriously thought he had a problem! He spent so much money on it that I would try and stop him and compare him to a crack addict!
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#17 written by Lena LeRay 11 months ago
I’d like to point out — late, I know — that there is a huge black market for virtual items. Ask any MMO player — people buying loot, money, and even whole accounts is a huge problem. And by problem, I mean that 1) it ruins virtual economies (granted, not a problem in Diablo because the cross-everything AH is the only economy), 2) is the leading cause of hacked accounts, either because people are trying to illicitly acquire things to sell or because someone is stupid enough to give their password to an online loot selling service, and 3) the companies that run these black virtual market enterprises don’t always keep your credit card information private.
So Blizzard is capitalizing on something that was already going to happen while making it safer to engage in buying and selling loot. People who don’t want to engage in real money transactions don’t have to. It’s not like they’re making a paid version of the freemium gaming model.
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I heard they take something ridiculous like 80% of the profit!