Will anyone make money off the AH?

[Fuger]

I'm sure plenty of people will make money. Not enough money to live off - no where near enough money to quit their dayjob. But I'm sure plenty of people will make something, enough to buy a new game or pay for a wow subscription - or more likely, to buy themselves some new gear back on the RMAH...

I plan on using it to move my Hunter to another server. Then to buy MoP when it comes out.

If I have money after that I will start buying Blizzard shirts and shit.

[Killmaim Deathbringer]

I might just stick a random Item on the AH for £30k and Hope some little rich kid gets his mom to buy it lol :P

[OrcsRLame]

I actually think people will make a lot of money off it. From what I understand, Inferno mode is supposed to be heroic raiding hard. That's not just something you can have a bot run.

Imagine if you could easily sell Heroic Ragnaros loot back when it was relevant content. And what else will you do with most of the drops you get? I haven't heard anything about class specific drops. So if you're doing Act 4 Inferno mode as a Barbarian and you get some legendary Demon Hunter gear, you'd sell it. Either for gold on the regular AH, or for real money.

I think the lower difficulty mode items will be over-saturated to hell. Both from people that are dumb enough to think they can make a quick buck, and by gold farmers. I can't imagine Inferno mode ever being over-farmed though if half the shit I've heard about it is true.

[Riptide]

I actually think people will make a lot of money off it. From what I understand, Inferno mode is supposed to be heroic raiding hard. That's not just something you can have a bot run.

Imagine if you could easily sell Heroic Ragnaros loot back when it was relevant content. And what else will you do with most of the drops you get? I haven't heard anything about class specific drops. So if you're doing Act 4 Inferno mode as a Barbarian and you get some legendary Demon Hunter gear, you'd sell it. Either for gold on the regular AH, or for real money.

I think the lower difficulty mode items will be over-saturated to hell. Both from people that are dumb enough to think they can make a quick buck, and by gold farmers. I can't imagine Inferno mode ever being over-farmed though if half the shit I've heard about it is true.

Pretty much this. The people making the money are going to be the ones farming inferno or spending all day buying and selling on both AH's + forums. I don't see many making a decent living out of it, but I would be naive to say they won't at this point. Considering how many people do with other virtual goods.

[Lathais]

Yes, people will make money. Will it be enough to replace a job? Highly doubtful. I'm sure if you play it well though you'll never have to pay for your WoW sub or Ex-packs or any other Blizz product cause you'll be able to make enough in your B.net account to pay for stuff like that. A livable wage though? Possible, but not very likely at all. Probably make less than $5/hour. Yeah, less than, $5/hour will probably be really really good.

[Abysal]

People will make money, just not much. You can't lose money off the RMAH, because you only are charged when something sells. So anyone who sells anything will have made some money, even if it's only a few cents.

[Lathais]

I actually think people will make a lot of money off it. From what I understand, Inferno mode is supposed to be heroic raiding hard. That's not just something you can have a bot run.

Imagine if you could easily sell Heroic Ragnaros loot back when it was relevant content. And what else will you do with most of the drops you get? I haven't heard anything about class specific drops. So if you're doing Act 4 Inferno mode as a Barbarian and you get some legendary Demon Hunter gear, you'd sell it. Either for gold on the regular AH, or for real money.

I think the lower difficulty mode items will be over-saturated to hell. Both from people that are dumb enough to think they can make a quick buck, and by gold farmers. I can't imagine Inferno mode ever being over-farmed though if half the shit I've heard about it is true.

While early on this may be the case, it is not sustainable. It may take a few years, but eventually most people that want the stuff will have it. Demand will go down, therefore prices will too. With the Max at $250 per item, early on Inferno Act 4 stuff may sell for that much, but not for long. So again, yeah, people will make money, but not earn a living.

[rinleezwins]

You will rather make some money by getting lucky with rare drops than farming.

[Iracor]

The supply for the very best armor will be extremely low for quite a while assuming it's as hard as Blizzard has said it will be while the demand will be quite high considering how popular D3 is from pre-orders alone, so yes very good people who can clear Inferno Act 4 will make quite a bit of money in the first few months.

[Cthulhu 2020]

I expect to make enough money to pay for my WoW account on the side, and maybe pay for a few character transfers... maybe some mounts/pets out of the Blizzard store, but I don't expect to be making tons of money.

The $250 account cap will be a big hindrance on item prices, especially for super rare items. There might be a "black market" where people sell and buy items via third party web sites, like there was in D2 after Ebay no longer allowed sale of virtual items, but for the most part people will stick with Blizzard's RMAH because it's easy and legitimate, so even third party sites won't really flourish if you can get a super rare perfect item for $250.

Then again, there will probably be people in the business of buying things for $250 and turning around and selling them for a huge profit on third party sites.

[Riptide]

Yes, people will make money. Will it be enough to replace a job? Highly doubtful. I'm sure if you play it well though you'll never have to pay for your WoW sub or Ex-packs or any other Blizz product cause you'll be able to make enough in your B.net account to pay for stuff like that. A livable wage though? Possible, but not very likely at all. Probably make less than $5/hour. Yeah, less than, $5/hour will probably be really really good.

That's over 27k a year if you play 16 hours a day (a benefit of this would be you can work more than 8 hours). Not really a decent living but enough to get by.

[Gsara]

I expect to make enough money to pay for my WoW account on the side, and maybe pay for a few character transfers... maybe some mounts/pets out of the Blizzard store, but I don't expect to be making tons of money.

The $250 account cap will be a big hindrance on item prices, especially for super rare items. There might be a "black market" where people sell and buy items via third party web sites, like there was in D2 after Ebay no longer allowed sale of virtual items, but for the most part people will stick with Blizzard's RMAH because it's easy and legitimate, so even third party sites won't really flourish if you can get a super rare perfect item for $250.

Then again, there will probably be people in the business of buying things for $250 and turning around and selling them for a huge profit on third party sites.

There already is, google a little bit and you will see there are some sites are already up for D3 and gw2(accounts, gold, etc). Putting up any super rares for max bid on RMAH will get bought out in a heartbeat.

[Lathais]

That's over 27k a year if you play 16 hours a day (a benefit of this would be you can work more than 8 hours). Not really a decent living but enough to get by.

Yeah, but that's a really big IF you can make that much, combined with the fact that I don't think many people could play 16 hours a day straight every day without burning out.

[nogard64]

Yeah, but that's a really big IF you can make that much, combined with the fact that I don't think many people could play 16 hours a day straight every day without burning out.

I'm basically getting laid off in June... so I'm hoping to make at least $20 a day, I live at home so really I have no bills save gas and food. If I can pull off $20 a day I will be a very happy man. I'm probably willing to put in 6-8 hours a day of playing.

And of course goal one is to get the game paid off, need to make $60 to pay it off, yeah I charged the game to a credit card.

I don't know if my goal is realistic or not, but I guess we will all see very soon.

[counterhero]

I'm basically getting laid off in June... so I'm hoping to make at least $20 a day, I live at home so really I have no bills save gas and food. If I can pull off $20 a day I will be a very happy man. I'm probably willing to put in 6-8 hours a day of playing.

And of course goal one is to get the game paid off, need to make $60 to pay it off, yeah I charged the game to a credit card.

I don't know if my goal is realistic or not, but I guess we will all see very soon.

Way too optimistic about making twenty dollars a day. There will be so many people flooding the market. You won't make anything unless you get something really rare. Most people wont be buying crappy stuff with real money. Because its easy to buy crappy stuff with the gold you already have.

[Slaughty8]

Way too optimistic about making twenty dollars a day. There will be so many people flooding the market. You won't make anything unless you get something really rare. Most people wont be buying crappy stuff with real money. Because its easy to buy crappy stuff with the gold you already have.

If thats true, then it could be more cost-effective to buy items for $ and sell them for gold and then sell the gold to the ppl. Why?
1.) demand will be very high, considering about 740k needed to max out artisians
2.) more than 130k needed for each crafting try with inferno items
3.) players will need many tries to get good stats worth a penny, so even if crafting an hell item costs 20k, they need many, many tries
4.) I am guessing that armor repairs will cost tons of money per death on the inferno.

Like blizz stated many times, gold will have a real value. I am assuming that if inferno repairs won't be high enough, they will "fix it" by raising it so gold sink exists.

[furydeath]

Depending how it goes I might just put rare items I wont be using from like hell or inferno.

[Defang]

I think initially some people will make money, but as the market becomes flooded with ever advancing bots quickly devaluing everything on the market, normal people that play will no longer be able to make any money.

To say that blizzard will be able to put a halt to botting activities would be naive to say and I just hope they can at least keep it down to a reasonable level. I kind of wonder how many people are already planning on trying to make a living off the RMAH.

[MixelPlx]

I think folks forget that the RMAH is by region isn't it?

As for the ability to make money with it, not sure honestly. It really depends on the drop rate of the legendary's.

People also forget that in most cases, that person that got that item either got lucky and got that particular item in 1-10runs or wasn't lucky and had to run it 1000 times.
If something is the maximum $$ value, you are most likely paying for the time spent to obtain that item.

Forgot to mention the gold value will be astronomical due to crafting/repairs in the harder modes. 130k cost to craft an inferno item? Crazy!

In the long haul, I can personally see gold being worth more than a item unless its in high demand like the SOJ's.

[Riptide]

Way too optimistic about making twenty dollars a day. There will be so many people flooding the market. You won't make anything unless you get something really rare. Most people wont be buying crappy stuff with real money. Because its easy to buy crappy stuff with the gold you already have.

Not really, people buying stuff with gold are still buying it with money. Don't care how you want to look at it, but that's the reality of it. You could just as easily sell the gold for money, thus spending money. It's like those people who say they farm their own mats to save gold, meanwhile I'll make more GPH on the AH buying and reselling during the time they are farming. Then I'll just buy the mats. So I gained more gold than they did while they assumed they were "saving" gold.

Forgot to mention the gold value will be astronomical due to crafting/repairs in the harder modes. 130k cost to craft an inferno item? Crazy!

In the long haul, I can personally see gold being worth more than a item unless its in high demand like the SOJ's.

You contradict yourself here. If gold is more valuable because of repairs and crafting items. Then one can assume the items are going to be worth more than the gold it costs to craft. Potentially many times more valuable, depending on the properties.