Gold AH - is it viable ?

[ael]

in diablo 2 gold was useless becuase it was everywhere, but there was no where to spend it.

You're kidding, right ?

Just reviving your merc during runs was 35k gold, whereas monsters dropped around 20-50g.

Lets not talk about weapon repairs.. People actually made RW's in phaseblades so you didn't have to repair it, because it was too expensive .. Whereas berserker axes provided greater damage, actually.

Also lets not forget gambling, where you could spend millions in seconds, literaly.

We had HUUUGE sinks in d2, actually so large it pissed me off.. Did it make gold any more valuable? Nope.

So I don't see that argument being valid.

[Mn_Swe2]

The gold AH will be used a lot early on IMO, but who is going to sell end game gear for gold instead of money?

Everyone playing hardcore.
Unless they turn to other non-supported out-of-game website.

[Ashandari]

I expect gold will be viable since there isn't a carry limit like there was in Diablo II. I think Blizzard is setting themselves up for rampant inflation though. Making white items useless is a mistake IMO; white item drop rates are a nice constant that blizzard can play around with, the only thing that gear can change is making some of those white items magic items instead with Magic Find(or at least I would think that's how it works). But when going around breaking barrels is already the best way to farm gold, and then having a gold find stat that modifies that into truly ridiculous numbers... well, I think there's a problem.

[Darkflight]

You're kidding, right ?

Just reviving your merc during runs was 35k gold, whereas monsters dropped around 20-50g.

Lets not talk about weapon repairs.. People actually made RW's in phaseblades so you didn't have to repair it, because it was too expensive .. Whereas berserker axes provided greater damage, actually.

Also lets not forget gambling, where you could spend millions in seconds, literaly.

We had HUUUGE sinks in d2, actually so large it pissed me off.. Did it make gold any more valuable? Nope.

So I don't see that argument being valid.

Mercs rarely died when you geared them properly.

The most common Phase Blade runeword was Grief which gave +damage instead +%damage, which made the base weapon damage not that important. Berserker Axes also had only 24 durability if I recall correctly, making it so that that you had to repair all the time. Finally, Phase Blades had a better base speed then Berserker Axes. The price for the repairs wasn't what made people use Phase Blades for some runewords.

Gambling was the only real use for gold, and the target item was Circlets/Coronets. But because the amount of gold you could carry was so limited compared to the price of gambling, it was a huge pain to gamble heavily. If Blizzard had made you able to carry infinite gold in Diablo 2 you would easily see people trading high-end unique items for large amounts of gold. And by large I am talking 100 million and up. I had a 14%,29 resist, 2 socket Crown of Ages that I would easily sell for 200 million gold had it been possible when I played Diablo 2.

The only reason for gold not beeing valuable in Diablo 2 was the extreme limit to how much you could carry.

[galzohar]

Even if you could carry infinite gold, just the amount of time you had to spend clicking the gamble button would discourage you to trade for gold rather than something else. But at least it would make gold an option.

[MoUsE_WiZ]

Even if you could carry infinite gold, just the amount of time you had to spend clicking the gamble button would discourage you to trade for gold rather than something else. But at least it would make gold an option.

This is a little true, but people would probably have written gamble bots if gambling was viable.

[galzohar]

Why make effort writing a gamble bot when that bot can do so much more running pindle?

[Hideo]

I don't see any of D2 gold problems solved FUNDAMENTALLY in D3. I expect a rampant hyperinflation form day one. Some people are already farming 20k per hour... at level 13. Imagine the numbers in end-game gear, in Inferno. There will be a whole LEGION of Chinese gold farmers doing 100k per hour, 10 hours per day, day in, day out, forever. How are they going to stop that?

[sdemon]

Just adding - Hardcore players will not have access to the RMAH, they can only use the GAH.

If you want to play with a friend from another region, you have to create a character in that region and that character will not have access to the RMAH.

[MoUsE_WiZ]

Why make effort writing a gamble bot when that bot can do so much more running pindle?

You say 'writing' at first then 'running' later so I'm not sure which you mean. I'll assume both.

@Both:
Clearly people both wrote and ran shop bots, so it's pretty obvious that they would do the same for gambling if it was a viable way to acquire items. Note the qualification btw, I used it in the other post too. People haven't done it because it hasn't been viable.

@Writing:
A gamble bot has to:
- interact with an NPC
- view items in NPC inventory / know which are worth buying
- buy said items
- view items in own inventory / know which are worth keeping
Pathing and finding the NPC would be nice to have, but you can position the bot yourself.

A pindle bot has to:
- interact with a portal
- view items on ground / know which are worth picking up
- pick up said items
- view items in own (after IDing) inventory / know which are worth keeping
And a whole bunch more, including pathing being mandatory.

Basically, if you can write a pindle bot, it'll take you an extra hour maybe to write a gamble bot. In the mean time, many people who wouldn't have the time / ability to write a pindle bot would be able to put a gamble bot together.

Beyond that, most of the reasons why you'd run one are reasons why you'd write one.

@Running:
1) Bots can't really run pindle faster than people, only longer. A gamble bot could go several orders of magnitude faster than a human, bounded primarily by latency or maybe by having to intentionally slow down to avoid being noticed.
2) More people able to write means more bots to detect, including private bots, means you'd probably be safer gamble botting than pindle botting.
3) You don't need to gear a gamble bot, so if you have extra keys and characters but not extra gear you may as well. This is particularly relevant early in ladder seasons on HC.
4) If you have one anyways, you might as well use it when you're low level and have 200k to burn trying to get a circlet (recall point 1). Can't really do that with a pindle bot.