Gold AH - is it viable ?

[Darkflight]

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

Gambling was the only realistic way of getting 2/20/20/20/2 circlets.

[KIIFive]

I think the other problem with gold was the max amount that you could carry. For it to be viable, you needed to be able to spend more gold in a single transaction than you could carry because of how plentiful it was.

This was definitely the issue in D2. It would be like only ever being able to have $100 IRL, eventually people would start using assets to tade for things because a lot of things that people need (car, house etc) are simply worth much more than $100.

It isn't and wasn't the cumbersome numbers that we dealt with, it was the cap.


Which brings me to question weather there is a cap in D3 or not, anyone know?
Edit: nvm answer was on page 2.

With the inflation thing, items = gold, effectively. So saying people who farm gold will cause inflation, is just the same as saying people who magic find will cause inflation. Both are true, and there isn't really anything you can do about it since everyone is always finding both. I don't really know of a real solution other than periodic resets.

[galzohar]

Yes, you have some points about the benefits of a gambling bot, but then again we are going completely off-topic with this gambling bot discussion. Sure it's not completely useless, but there's a reason we hear about pindle-bots non-stop but haven't heard much of gambling bots, and I'll leave it at that.

In any case, gold will have uses even for the bot-less player in D3, and you can pretty much always use more gold, thus gold AH will work just fine IMO.

And I agree about the inflation - It affects gold just as much as it affects items. In fact, it might affect items more, since deaths eat up gold but don't eat up items, and converting gold into items (crafting) is probably going to be much more effective than converting items into gold (selling to vendor).

[Hideo]

There is only one requirement for destruction of gold economy - hyperinflation. Currently, I don't see any solution implemented in the design of D3 which prevents that. If there will be hyperinflation, gold WILL become worthless. The problem is, without good chat support, it will be hard to establish some kind of different economy. Anyway, time will tell.

[Mn_Swe2]

If there will be hyperinflation, gold WILL become worthless. The problem is, without good chat support, it will be hard to establish some kind of different economy. Anyway, time will tell.

Not really, and I think many of you know which website I talk about. I dislike most of the things they do there but I can not ignore the fact that they have managed to create a complete monetary system that seems to work ok, even between different games.

[Enlil]

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?

Ah, but gold does have a real money value. Sell for gold and then sell the gold.

[Hideo]

In WoW, they strictly separate the gold economy from the dollar economy, by hunting and banning gold sellers for ex. In D3, they consciously linked them. The effect will be that there will be MUCH more gold farmers, who try to make a few bucks on gold. Add to it GF and MF gear and the fact that much more gold drops on average and you have a PERFECT environment for wild hyperinflation.

[Harlow]

I'd like to disagree with you but the only clear point you make is no copper silver gold hierarchy.

[Tobit]

I think two things will keep gold relevant. First, the (apparent) lack of a gold cap, as discussed by others. (Of course, there is some kind of limit, but hopefully Blizzard has elected to use a 64 bit integer value, which comes out to an 18 million trillion gold cap. If someone is able to max that out, then they truly have no idea how to control an economy, as it would require making a billion gold a day, every day for 50 million years.)

The other thing is that gold is tied directly (well, semi-directly) to "real" currency. Since we can always sell gold for cash, we can always know how much something on the GAH is worth in terms of dollars, pesos, yen, etc. Even if the exchange is something like a million gold=1 USD, there is still value in that gold.

[Enlil]

I think two things will keep gold relevant. First, the (apparent) lack of a gold cap, as discussed by others. (Of course, there is some kind of limit, but hopefully Blizzard has elected to use a 64 bit integer value, which comes out to an 18 million trillion gold cap. If someone is able to max that out, then they truly have no idea how to control an economy, as it would require making a billion gold a day, every day for 50 million years.)

The other thing is that gold is tied directly (well, semi-directly) to "real" currency. Since we can always sell gold for cash, we can always know how much something on the GAH is worth in terms of dollars, pesos, yen, etc. Even if the exchange is something like a million gold=1 USD, there is still value in that gold.

There should be a relationship between the RMAH and GAH prices but I don't think that will be the case.
You always going to have people putting items on the GAH for 500,000 which in gold could be sold for $500 making the cost of that item $500.

It looks good on paper I expect there to be big differences in the price between the two markets. This can be exploited by Investing some real money and play the markets off against each other, but for the non investor like my self, prices differences between markets do not affect me.

My only concerns will be.

1. How much is the item worth on the RMAH
2. How much gold could I get for for item and is selling for gold then selling the gold for real money after fees more profitable.

The second point is the the only way to exploit the price difference between the two markets other than investing real money into the real money market.