Posts with tag real-money-auction-house

Last year, Blizzard announced their intention to close the Diablo III real-money auction house. On March 18th of this year, Blizzard mostly completed that task and removed players' ability to bid, buyout, and list items on that auction house. However, since then, players have still been able to claim gold and receive items from the "Completed" auction house tab. They will remain able to do so until next week, in order to allow adequate time for players to retrieve anything they may have won or sold.

On June 24th, the shutdown of the Diablo III real-money auction house will be complete, and the real-money auction house will be gone in its entirety. Any items or gold that may be yours will be lost forever, so if you have any of these things lingering in what remains of the Diablo III auction house, now is the time to claim them.

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The auction house in Diablo III has been plagued by various issues basically since the game's release, however, Blizzard's announcement today that they are going to close both the gold and real money auction houses entirely still comes as a bit of shock. In the video embedded above -- and echoed in a Diablo official blog post -- Diablo III's Production Director John Hight and Game Director Josh Mosqueira state that Blizzard has come to the conclusion that the auction house system in Diablo III undermines the game's core gameplay, which is to kill monsters and get loot. This is ostensibly the driving factor behind axing the systems entirely.

A new system, coyly referred to as "Loot 2.0," is in the works for Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, and they hope that the changes will result in a much more rewarding experience for Diablo players. If you're an avid auction house user you don't have to scramble just yet to get all your ducks in a row before the shut down. We've been given six months' notice, so mark your calenders. The Diablo III auction houses will close their doors for good on March 18, 2014. Until then, it's business as usual.

So what else surprised me? What else did they do that I didn't see coming? To be honest, there are so many that narrowing it down to five is a bit hard for me. I never expected playable pandaren, for one thing. That's not going on the list, but it did surprise me. I'm going to do five aside from transmog, because I natter on about that one a lot.

Since the advent of gold sellers, players have discussed the ethics of buying gold with real currency, as well as what would if Blizzard started selling gold. Then came the Guardian Cub, and suddenly Blizzard was allowing gold buying and selling via a vanity pet.

Later, Blizzard hit us with the announcement that Diablo III would have an auction house that uses real money. Now that the Real-Money Auction House has been launched, the debates have heated up. This guide is to help you decide, debate, or deliberate about real money in Blizzard games.

Real-money transactions for WoW

• The implications of a real-dollar auction house
• What WoW can learn from other transaction models, part 1 and part 2
• Guardian Cub pros and cons
• WoW's immune system and the gold selling virus
• Blizzard responds to Guardian Cub controversy
• Guardian Cub pet available for purchase
• How much is a Guardian Cub worth?
• Guardian cub taking a bite out of third-party gold sales

The Real-Money Auction House is now accessible to the Americas via Battle.net balance or approved payment services for some currencies. The U.S. dollar, Australian dollar, and the Mexican peso are all supported, with the EU region and more currency from the Americas to be implemented soon.

The long-delayed RMAH will now allow players to purchase and sell in-game items using their region's currency. Your home game region will affect which RMAH you will have access to, so if you have created characters to play outside the country registered to your Battle.net account, you will not be able to use the RMAH for those characters.

Only equipment such as armor and weapons is available on the RMAH at this time. Commodities will be added at a later date. In some cases, items may be held for processing. Most items purchased will be available immediately, however.

Using the Battle.net Balance for your Real-Money Auction House transactions requires that you have an authenticator or mobile authenticator on your account. Furthermore, if you choose to use PayPal (not available in all regions), you must use the Battle.net SMS Protection feature.

To access the RMAH, go to your Campaign Screen in Diablo III and select Auction House. Then press the button that shows your region's currency. You can toggle back and forth between the gold AH and the Real-Money one.

The entire announcement from Blizzard is after the break.

In order to use the Real-Money Auction House in Diablo III (which can be used to fuel your WoW subscription), you need to have a Battle.net balance set up for buying and selling items. Because Blizzard is understandably concerned about account security, an authenticator or mobile authenticator is now required in order to add to your Battle.net balance. Transferring proceeds from the RMAH to your B.Net balance will also require the use of an authenticator.

The RMAH has yet to be implemented in Diablo III, but some players have already added money to their balance in preparation for its launch. Those players will be still be able to use it to pay for eligible purchases or to use in the RMAH without the added security, but adding to the balance from now on will require adding an authenticator to their accounts.

I think that preparing beforehand for the inevitable attempted account incursions is a very responsible move on Blizzard's part. This move is good for the players, as well as good for their customer service department, I'm sure.

The full announcement is after the break.

Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, and esoteroic topics that slip through the cracks.

Blizzard has been off to a pretty good start with Diablo III, selling who-cares-at-this-point millions of copies of the game people have been waiting over a decade to get their hands on. The craziest part about the whole thing is that it lived up to the hype -- a new Diablo game that felt like a Diablo game. Good for you, Blizzard! That's not what today's Lawbringer is about, no sir or ma'am. I've got a few topics I'd like to ramble on about today.

You know those days in high school when the teacher was inbetween lesson plans and they just sort of rambled to you for that one day that they had set aside in case Federico didn't understand the "green light" symbolism in The Great Gatsby? That story happened, but I changed the names to make it more funny to the people who get the joke. Great way to start off this edition, right? Make the most inside-baseball column on WoW Insider get a little more in-jokey. Mat, you sure know how to hook 'em.

No, wait, stay. I've got lots to say about Diablo III, the potential issues with the real money auction house, and my own thoughts on the cross-realm compromise and dodging the dreaded "merge." I think you'll have plenty to say in the comments after today's topics -- they are some of my favorites.

Gold is king

As in WoW, the primary resource that makes the world go 'round is gold. There's no silver or copper here, though; it's gold all the way down, and lots of it. If you're still in the WoW mindset of "Gee, a couple of thousand gold is a lot of money," then you'll want to recalibrate. You can expect to have several thousand gold by the end of the first Act. Your primary source for gold will be drops. Monsters, chests, objects -- most everything drops gold, and the amount increases as you progress through the game.

Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, and esoteroic topics that slip through the cracks.

Before we begin today's Lawbringer, I wanted to give you all your homework for next week's topic. Greg Boyd wrote an excellent article over at Gamasutra about improving the game industry's security and data privacy issues. Blizzard is one of the companies out there with huge online security concerns but seems to get by fairly well. I will examine Blizzard through Boyd's seven steps and show how Blizzard is leading the charge and how other game companies could benefit from Blizzard's trials and tribulations.

Fifteen percent is going to be the new number that people will be talking about for a good, long time. Why? Blizzard has set a standard in the American markets for real-money auction house cuts and fees. With Diablo III literally bursting from its hellish mother's writhing, pestilence-ridden birthing sack, players will soon be entering the world of Sanctuary and wearing out mice so fast that the stress on the peripheral market's demand crushes a generation of hopeful clickers. Diablo III will consume a lot of people's souls for a while, so it's best to get them all prepared now, not later.

Blizzard has begun the arduous process of educating the playerbase about these new and radical systems coming with Diablo III. The real-money auction house is the big ticket item here, proving a safe and secure place for players to interact and auction items, much like they currently do in the seedy, potentially dangerous gray markets for virtual item trades and sales. Going to these sites is the equivalent of going to gold sites, to compare it to a WoW phenom, with the same risks and hazards coupled with the same instant gratification. Why have a company with which you have no recourse have your credit card information, when you could give it to Blizzard instead? At least you know where they live.

Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play?

On Wednesday, Blizzard announced that PayPal would be its payment service partner for the new Battle.net wallet and Diablo 3 real money transaction Auction House coming with the release of the next Diablo game. Was anyone really surprised at this announcement? I sure wasn't, but that's because I already knew PayPal would be the payment service partner for the Diablo 3 real money Auction House from the moment the Diablo 3 real money Auction House was announced. I'm not trying to be smug here, because you knew it, too. You just didn't know that you knew.

The relationship between Blizzard and PayPal is an easy one to decipher because of the nature of the business Blizzard is getting into with the Diablo 3 RMT Auction House. Auctions for real money are firmly in PayPal's wheelhouse because, shocker of shockers, PayPal is owned by eBay. When you think about the feasibility of the RMT Auction House and all of the legal ramifications that go along with it, you point to the eBay model of online auction facilitation for what works and provides the path of least resistance.

This article is not a critique of PayPal as a service. There are plenty of places on the web to find that type of article. Instead, The Lawbringer will look at the actual services that Blizzard provides with PayPal, why PayPal was the obvious choice for real money transactions, and how PayPal's integration into Battle.net is not the potentially apocalyptic scenario that a few have presumed.