Rares dropping hard and fast. Liquidate old gear stock asap?der=0><

[Moik]

One week and no Azzure post? I see you Tweeting! Make with the advice and commentary!

Anyways, I just got back from a few four-man Butcher runs under the 1.0.3 revised drop system, and HOOOOLY you get way more yellow now while you farm up your Neph and knock down elites and champs. I mean that even with MF at an average of 150 across the group at 5-Neph, the rare drop rates feel like they've tripled. It was normal for my backpack to be half yellow each time I went back to town.

I suspect decently rolled gear may become very common very fast. I'm expecting a massive gear flood over the weekend with a tonne of undercutting. Things which are near perfect are probably still going to retain their value, since they're still really rare (each of us only got 2 or 3 things across all the runs which we felt were noteworthy*, but only one was super epic* between the four of us), but we each got a dozen things we felt were "decent"* over the course of an hour.

Before, we might come out of three Butcher runs with nothing noteworthy and three or four things which were decent.

* Very general terms. Ex, super epic would be a 100dex, 100vit, 60 resist all, 30mf amulet. Something in the realm of high rolls on a 4-6 affix set, worth like 5milgp on a good day. Noteworthy would be something like 80 dex, 80vit, 45 resist all, 25mf amulet, worth like 500k on a good day. Decent would be something like 60 dex, 60 vit, 30 resist all, 20mf amulet, worth like 100k on a good day.

[Accaris]

There are more rares but fewer level 60 items. It balances out. In fact, there will be probably be less decent gear than before, since the chance of getting ilvl 63 in Act 3 and 4 is actually much lower now.

[Catastrophe]

The market for 'decent' and 'noteworthy' items will dry up over the year. Whenever someone gets their decent or noteworthy gear then the market shrinks by one. Whenever someone quits, the market shrinks by one. Eventually everyone will have noteworthy gear.

D2 sold a million billion copies, but there were under a million players at any given moment close to launch of LoD. And then a year after that, 2002, the player count was beyond the peak forever. Something that people often forget is that the economy of D2 was positively wrecked while the game was still popular in the first two years. Everyone was playing, so everyone had everything. When everyone has everything, trading is impossible. A thousand bots can make a dent in an economy, but a million players playing legit does a lot more 'damage' if you think about it.

There was a lot that went wrong with D2. Gambling used to be cheatable back when it was client-side. Many dupes happened, particularly the SoJ. People say that those things ruined the D2 economy. But actually that was the start of people beginning to trade with each other. And while I'm at it, also the start of the 3rd-party gold/item sellers. No one was selling D2 items when the game was new, either. (Okay, very few. I remember the $700 Windforce.) I don't think D3 will be any different over its lifetime. Right now we're in the early phase with too many legit players.