Bye Bye Diablo III Auction House

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 12:34 PM

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Blizzard announced that they will be completely removing the Auction House after March 18, 2014.  They provided a video to explain this decision and how it will affect the game.

http://youtu.be/ijCgKciMIE4

But this does bring up something interesting in the idea of would they do the same to World of Warcraft?   The Auction House system has been an integral part of MMO's since Final Fantasy XI introduced one of the first active trading systems.  Before then upgrades were either done via trade chat or even sales from online sites such as Ebay.

The removal of an Auction House system will make the next Diablo Expansion that much more interesting in how it upgrades gear.  Modern MMO's such as Marvel Heroes have yet to introduce an auction house and off server pages for trading have flourished.  Pages such as Marko's DiabloIII Gold Guide site are already planning on transferring to off server trade auctions.

So what would happen if Blizzard decided to do the same thing and remove the Auction House from World of Warcraft?   The normal Auction House has always been considered stable, and even the Black Market Auction House has been a popular addition to the Mists of Pandaria Expansion.   The key difference between the World of Warcraft auction house system and the Diablo III auction house system is the Real Money Auction House.  The addition of real money elements into the auction house system was the monkey wrench that brought the concept down.

Where all the money that was on the Warcraft auction house was ethereal in nature,  Diablo III's version encouraged a much higher manipulation into the system.  Players would spend hours farming Epic level gear to sell and rotate through the money making system.   The system became flawed when inflation drove in game gold to become completely worthless. 

When the Real Money Auction House was added to Diablo III I was excited with the concept.  The one thing I think they missed was adding a limit to how much could be earned in real money.  There may be few that were able to manipulate the system to their advantage,  but even a few can cause chaos for a semi closed auction environment.   On this and other journals it's been shown many times that a few can control the multitudes when it comes to pricing on gear and popular items.  If someone needs a quick reminder of this go and sell glyphs on your server at 250g and see how fast it drops to 15g per.

This is in no way a condemnation of the players that took advantage of the Diablo III RMAH system.  In fact,I admire their ability to balance the tediousness of playing the game and being shrewd in their monetary mechanics.  It just is a shame that Blizzard has decided to completely throw out the baby with the bathwater instead of looking for a much better solution.

Good Luck and Good Hunting

Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbear @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at "@JMTCMommar" You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up, and I will buy you a glass of juice. 

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Gold Making too easy?

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 12:10 PM

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Every so often I get emails from fellow players. Requesting specific tips, or strategies for their servers

or to their current professions. Generally I try to provide these to the best of my ability. Hoping to not just open up opportunities for their professions, but to help educate them on advancing beyond what I share with them to be able to find their own market niches.

With each progressive expansion more and more gold is poured into the economy. Also with the plethora (there is your quarter word for the day) of guides, websites and sheets on how to make money in WOW. Has making gold become to easy?

Any player that has a large amount of money in their banks will tell you, it changes how you play the game. You no longer worry about gear repair, or how much that sword of awesomeness is. If you want it, you buy it, if it drops you either decide to equip it for one of your alts, or you sell it. Occasionally even the generosity of people show up with showers of 10k gold to random strangers, or games of hide and seek appears in trade chat.

So what would happen if WOW actually tightened up the gold making process? Currently you are not required to craft or sell a single item to make gold. The opportunity to just do solo and daily questscan make a significant amount of gold. Many quests at 85 being over 50g per to turn in, vendoring greens and even vendoring blue items (please do not do this, every time you vendor a Blue BOE a kitten cries somewhere). What would occur if WOW lowered quest rewards to 5g per turn-in. Dailies just gave reputation/xp? That would make knowledge of making gold separate from questing that much more important.

In all reality, this isn't that far off of an idea. Diablo 3 introduced a Real money auction house (RMAH for short) going hand and hand with a regular game gold auction house (more details and strategies can be found on one of friend sites at http://www.diablogoldsecrets.com/. Would this type of strategy work with WOW? A complete overhaul of the AH we know now that lowers the gold amount, and evens the playing field?

Gold making at its heart has quickly become a stable part of the warcraft game format. With it's own pitfalls and rewards. But goblins are prepared for anything, even the possibility of something being too easy.

Good luck and good hunting

Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbearjoe @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at "@Dragonbearjoe" or leave a comment here. You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up and I will buy you a glass of juice.


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Five Diablo 3 Gold Tips Help You in Wow Too!

Posted by Markco at 8:01 AM

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One MMO Economy to Another

If you haven't seen my new Diablo 3 Gold Tips Site, you better check it out! Why? Because the strategies I'm currently discussing have been influenced by what I've learned in Wow. It stands to reason that these strategies could help you play World of Warcraft's auction house as well as Diablo 3's Gold and Real Money auction houses.

Let's take five examples of articles from this new blog and discuss how they could help you to play better in Wow as well as Diablo 3.


1. Dominate the RMAH

The six strategies discussed in this post directly relate to similar strategies in World of Warcraft. All of them are rooted in core principles that apply to all MMO's, but whose strategies I picked up from manipulating and exploiting the World of Warcraft auction house.


2. Beating Gold Farmers

Just like in Wow, there will be gold farmers in Diablo 3. Only difference being that now they are allowed! How will you defeat them in Diablo 3's real money and gold auction houses? The same way you should be using them in Wow. There's even a video for those who would rather listen and watch than read.

Click to Continue Reading...