Why the RMAH will fail and how to fix it!

[ShadoutMapes]

that is completely fals and you are not really thinking about this.. We know 100% certain already that the D3 market will be very cheap after the first year, which creates a situation that makes the game broken! You must agree that for those who have mostly completed the game continuing using countless hours farming for items that has almost no value would not be appealing.

This will happen yes, but why do you assume Blizzard want it fixed, or sees it as a problem. They designed the RMAH and surely knows what will happen.
They just don't care.

This will hurt the game longevity for some people, but the majority claim it wont affect them. The majority wont be playing Diablo III 1 year from now anyway. In any case Blizzard will already have got their money though.

[Lokiftw]

It seems logical to assume they will constantly tune the game, in real time, so it maintains maximized AH volume for their (assumed) target users: farmers of all kinds, and the the majority of the modest % of the actual player base than infuse money into the game (whats avail to tax) via 5-25$ transactions, or whatever these ranges actually are.

The juice is in the transaction fees, right:....more transaction fees/time = higher rate ....and by targeting the highest volume areas = larger number of transactions occuring at a high (epic) rate.

The rmah might fail for alot of us (pipedreams)..but it wont for blizzard.

The game is going to be fun to play. The endgame (inferno) and pvp will be modern blizzard all the way and drive on for years.

I doubt many wil quit b/c they realize they can't make x$ per hour, or b/c inferno is too hard, because at the end of the day;
its diablo 3
you don't have to spend any money to keep playing,
and there is always the chance you could find a valuable item by playing.

[Magisk]

Good points.

If the majority doesnt play Diablo in 1year, then approx 2-3mill players have left and atleast 30mill items have hit the AH, just from the gear those who leave will then sell. If counting in what they have contributed into the "item economy" I would guess 100mill items at least..

=In about a year almost all items wll be worthless

As I see it only way for Blizzard to maintain the economy would be to release new items/expansions and at the same time increase difficulty along with the new items (because the items has to be better than the ones that are currently best) For the players this will obv suck a little, however I can see it work somewhat.

But anyways, in 1-2years the AH will get bombed, and there will be a ton of very mad players feeling like their game is broken/worthless

In Diablo2 it felt great finding items that were kinda hard to come buy, in Diablo3 u can buy those items for 1-2 usd (optimistic guess)

[galzohar]

I highly doubt all quitters will have top-end items. Most likely the distribution of items among quitters will not be very different than the item distribution among non-quitters. Quitters may have an effect on item prices making them a bit cheaper, but I doubt that effect will be gigantic. As long as there is still progression to be made and better (closer to perfect and/or higher inferno tier) items to be found, those items will still have a major value, and most won't ever actually get them as drops.

[Svetopolk]

-Item value will drop, making the game lose a lot of enjoyment!

Sorry, I don't get this.

[semakka]

Magisk, you have no clue about what will happen.

You do realize that there are 2 (and ONLY 2) posible ways for RMAH :
1.Will last 12-18 months without any problem.
2.Will crash in before 12-18 months (due to various reasons).

Regardless of which of the above...Blizzard will just need to make a patch or expansion in 2 months or 6 months or 12 months or 18 months just to restart the RMAH again.

If you believe that they, Blizzard, don't have ALREADY prepared 2-4 major patches and at least 1 expansion...you don't know much about them.

You think that they will just RMAH roll, see what happends, and decide what to do ? They ALREADY know what could happen, they have the solutions for every possible situation (not a big deal to know what can happend) and will fix w/e can be wrong.

Not only for RMAH, but for everything in game.

They are GODS.They can fix ANYTHING.

If they won't, than they will lose MONEY.I hardly think losing money it's Blizzard's plan for 2012.

[Magisk]

Magisk, you have no clue about what will happen.

You do realize that there are 2 (and ONLY 2) posible ways for RMAH :
1.Will last 12-18 months without any problem.
2.Will crash in before 12-18 months (due to various reasons).

Regardless of which of the above...Blizzard will just need to make a patch or expansion in 2 months or 6 months or 12 months or 18 months just to restart the RMAH again.

If you believe that they, Blizzard, don't have ALREADY prepared 2-4 major patches and at least 1 expansion...you don't know much about them.

You think that they will just RMAH roll, see what happends, and decide what to do ? They ALREADY know what could happen, they have the solutions for every possible situation (not a big deal to know what can happend) and will fix w/e can be wrong.

Not only for RMAH, but for everything in game.

They are GODS.They can fix ANYTHING.

If they won't, than they will lose MONEY.I hardly think losing money it's Blizzard's plan for 2012.

Ive written 3 times in this thread that Blizzard to fix this problem will release expansions/new gear. And how this will go down is like this:

1. Items will begin to lose value at a rate which will reduce the enjoyment of actually trying to get items yourself.
2. This happens around the same time as a lot of people stop playing Diablo, which will release from 20 to 100 million items ON TOP of the normal AH traffic.
3. Blizzard will address this issue letting people know their plans with new expansion etc, which will "revive" the game, however momentarily send the item value down even further.
4. Blizzard releases the expansion and the game is fun again, for a few months.

I think people don't realize that when an economy is brought into a game it does put a value on the time invested into it, should the economy crash the enjoyment will be drastically reduced. Thats just how it is..

Sorry, I don't get this.

Explained above, when there is an ecomny brought into a game it puts an value on time invested. If the value of item falls drastically low it removes any playability after you've completed the game.

I highly doubt all quitters will have top-end items. Most likely the distribution of items among quitters will not be very different than the item distribution among non-quitters. Quitters may have an effect on item prices making them a bit cheaper, but I doubt that effect will be gigantic. As long as there is still progression to be made and better (closer to perfect and/or higher inferno tier) items to be found, those items will still have a major value, and most won't ever actually get them as drops.

This is a very good point, ive spent some time thinking over this myself.

Normally the point where most people stop playing will be around were the peek of players complete it, but as we know its made extremely difficult to do so, perhaps bc Blizzard looked into how the economy would evolve and saw it needs to be dragged out for a looong time.

This would most certainly keep the value on the best items out of the first "AH inflation", but I think the same faith will happen to those as well, later on.

I think everything will work as it should the first year, but from there I cant see the economy sustain itself and for myself and many others a lot of the fun will be gone. Hope im wrong tho

[ShadoutMapes]

Well, if the economy crash then there isn't an economy in the game anymore, and no "value on time". Sounds like it would be good if the economy crashed then.

[Magisk]

Well, if the economy crash then there isn't an economy in the game anymore, and no "value on time". Sounds like it would be good if the economy crashed then.

There would still be an economy, but one where you could buy 99% of all items for basically nothing

And no that would not be good at all, since a lot of the playability focuses around getting items..

[ShadoutMapes]

I dont really see much difference between buying 99% of all items for basically nothing or buying 99% of all items for a bit more than nothing.
Both are terrible.
At least if RMAH crash, maybe sellers will stop bothering with it, and Blizzard will figure out it was a bad idea and not use it in future games. Would be the best outcome we could get I guess.