Incoming destruction of Gold AH - Good thing or beginning of the end?

[widowkiller]

Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but I am almost positive that, when the RMAH comes out, the gold AH will collapse. Think about it - what's the first thing that everyone looking for a quick buck will do whem RMAH opens? They're going to list their gold, the one thing that will surefire sell. Hundreds of thousands of people are going to post their gold, at plummeting prices, and this is what I am sure will happen:

-Gold goes from 100k a dollar to 400k, 500k, or even lower in a matter of days.
-The devaluing of gold will cause prices of all items on the gold AH to rise to massive levels.
-The oversupply of gold due to the RMAH ends the easy supply of items, as even cheap worthless crap moves from 4 digit to 5 digit and even 6 digit prices.

The question is, could this maybe be a good thing? The biggest complaint people are having is that the AH makes it easy and boring to obtain items. If the economy becomes unbalanced toward the RMAH purely because of gold, maybe Blizzard will have to take a hard look at how they itemize? Maybe we can get back to the addictive gameplay of finding drops instead of buying them? Or maybe i'm trying to convince myself that this game can dig itself out of the massive pit it's about to fall into?

....someone please tell me i'm being dramatic

[Caiada]

Unless there's something really huge I'm completely missing, there's no chance the Gold AH will 'collapse.' I'm in fact going to wager that the RMAH will be significantly less popular long-term than everyone thinks, likely being used solely for high-level well-rolled rares and legendaries, along with gold, of course. The vast majority of transactions will be with cheap commodities.

[select20]

I think you are right, especially once someone builds up a few $$ on the RMAH, why not just keep posting there. A dollar earned is better than nothing at all.

[Mormolyce]

Man, to think of what a hassle it is to grind 100k gold and that it'd be worth less than a dollar... it's amazing how little some people are prepared to value their own time.

[vindicatorx]

My guess is yes that will happen to some extent, but I think the gold AH won't get used much when the RMAH goes live. The AH prices are ridiculous now a million gold for the blue level 60 gear my guess people are going to try and sell everything for real currency. I am sure the RMAH prices will be even worse my guess is gold will be an obsolete form of currency like what happened to lineage II.

---------- Post added 2012-06-06 at 03:50 AM ----------

Man, to think of what a hassle it is to grind 100k gold and that it'd be worth less than a dollar... it's amazing how little some people are prepared to value their own time.

I think the goldsellers will be the main ones doing that normal people will just buy the item

[MonsieuRoberts]

You're absolutely right.

God dammit.

[DeadmanWalking]

For all we know people might only buy gold because they dont want to purchase items with real money every time they want an item. So you buy gold, use it as you wish and then the people who sell items for gold can use the gold themselves (like for the special staff that is a moneys ink, or bag slots) or sell it for real money to people who don't want to spend real money everytime they want a different item.

[vindicatorx]

that and how much do you think they will be pricing legendaries at? my guess is $20 or so the first few weeks.

[Deleted]

that and how much do you think they will be pricing legendaries at? my guess is $20 or so the first few weeks.

Only legendaries really worth their price are the block chance and -dmg from elites legendaries for Barb. Everything else is most of the time utter crap.

[Merite]

If you can sell gold for $1/mil and you can sell an item for $20 on the RMAH or 40m on the Gold AH, which would you choose?

Just like, if I have 100m and am willing to spend all of it on an item and I see that on the RMAH and can sell my gold for $100, it's on the RMAH for $75, I'd "spend $75" so to speak. But I wouldn't spend actual money on the RMAH otherwise.

Gold AH and the RMAH will be within 15-30% of themselves or people will try and profit off of the gap, or people just won't use the RMAH and Buy Gold instead or vice versa.

[Igirol]

Or, you can switch to hardcore and stop the QQ

[Dhurn]

The $1 cut will do a lot to keep everything but the best of items off the RMAH. No one is going to want to sell an item for dollars if they can only get $2-3 for it, then have 33%-50% of the sale price taken away. I think it will certainly make the godliest of items tough to get for gold, but considering how saturated the item market will soon become, it wont be too hard to find a decent piece on the GAH.

As a side note, JSP >>> AH. Avoid all the bullshit cuts and get much better deals because people have a guaranteed sale and don't have to throw away 15% of their sale price. It's just much better all around, everyone sells for IGG and I've gotten like 7 parts of my gearset for half of what it would be on the AH. The AH is a waste of time and money IMO, when there's much better deals out there all the time.

[Santti]

I have a feeling gold AH will remain largely unaffected. I believe at least half of the playerbase will continue to use the gold AH as if nothing ever happened. I know I will.

Or, you can switch to hardcore and stop the QQ

Isn't that when the QQ begins? :P

[Abbeel]

Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but I am almost positive that, when the RMAH comes out, the gold AH will collapse. Think about it - what's the first thing that everyone looking for a quick buck will do whem RMAH opens? They're going to list their gold, the one thing that will surefire sell. Hundreds of thousands of people are going to post their gold, at plummeting prices, and this is what I am sure will happen:

-Gold goes from 100k a dollar to 400k, 500k, or even lower in a matter of days.
-The devaluing of gold will cause prices of all items on the gold AH to rise to massive levels.
-The oversupply of gold due to the RMAH ends the easy supply of items, as even cheap worthless crap moves from 4 digit to 5 digit and even 6 digit prices.

The question is, could this maybe be a good thing? The biggest complaint people are having is that the AH makes it easy and boring to obtain items. If the economy becomes unbalanced toward the RMAH purely because of gold, maybe Blizzard will have to take a hard look at how they itemize? Maybe we can get back to the addictive gameplay of finding drops instead of buying them? Or maybe i'm trying to convince myself that this game can dig itself out of the massive pit it's about to fall into?

....someone please tell me i'm being dramatic

This won't happen. Regardless of how easy it will be for a single person to acquire gold, it still needs to be farmed somewhere. Blizzard isn't selling it.

Any gold that enters the RMAH will have to come from somewhere.

[Lathais]

I have a feeling gold AH will remain largely unaffected. I believe at least half of the playerbase will continue to use the gold AH as if nothing ever happened. I know I will.



Isn't that when the QQ begins? :P

Not only will half only use it, the other half will use both. The 10 item limit is per AH, not total. You can have 10 on Gold AH and 10 on RMAH. People will see stuff on both, and gold they make on RMAH. So yeah, gold AH will be fine, it's not gonna crater, and as was pointed out, since gold will have a value, the prices should be about the same.

[Squishy Tia]

For all we know people might only buy gold because they dont want to purchase items with real money every time they want an item. So you buy gold, use it as you wish and then the people who sell items for gold can use the gold themselves (like for the special staff that is a moneys ink, or bag slots) or sell it for real money to people who don't want to spend real money everytime they want a different item.

The only problem with that line of thinking is that if you're buying gold to use on items, you're still buying items with real money, just in an indirect way. There are lots of people like myself who have zero intention of buying into the RMAH, and if that aspect of the game ruins the gold AH viability to the point that I have to grind for weeks on end for a single item of even mediocre quality, then I'm out.

Blizzard will need to keep an eye on the non-RMAH economy, because if they do nothing to prevent inflation to the point that the RMAH is the only way to get anything in-game, they stand to lose a lot of customers, and as a secondary and not so small consequence, their trust in the company as a whole.

What I envision happening down the road is the RMAH is introduced into World of Warcraft's AH system and then you have MGMT (Multi-Game Money Trading). It's a valid business model, no question about it. Let's say the D3 RMAH is popular enough that Blizzard is raking in the cash hand over fist. They'll expand it to WoW and for players of both games, one will be able to "game" one system to inject funds into the other system (D3 RMAH funds via the battle.net balance feature) in order to enjoy the "pay to win" in both games. Now, Blizzard already gets a $1/item (armor/weapon) in the RMAH, and 15% per commodity sub-transaction. This is regardless of whether or not you put it in your BNB account or funnel it through PayPal. Now let's say you chose to put your winnings from D3, which Blizzard already took 15% of, into your BNB and then use that balance to buy things in WoW. Blizzard takes 15% of that as well (I'm assuming identical pricing structures for simplicity's sake). So Blizzard makes more and more money off the "need for greed" cash cow that the RMAH is likely to become. They get you coming and going while hooking you on the RM model. It's a really insidious plan if you think about it, and a shrewd business tactic in all honesty. It ain't pretty, and it's something a lot of people aren't comfortable with, and may not tolerate in their games, but those left that use it will make Blizzard more money and those that leave will be less of a resource strain/money drain, so for Blizzard it still balances out to a win/win even if it makes them look like greedy asshats.

That won't stop people like me from leaving and never buying Blizzard products again, but only time will tell if I'm right and it's enough of a cash cow that it can supplant WoW itself and become the driving business model for Blizzard. I hope it doesn't, but oftentimes hope and reality just don't jive. And for those like myself that aren't thrilled with the pay to win scenario, we know who to thank for this. The RMAH and the scenario I just outlined above are pure Classic Kotick. It's too early to tell if it's feast or failure for this plan of his, but you can be assured that either way it's going to cause casualties along the way. I just hope the casualties don't include the "fun" of the games in the process.

[rektbrah]

Man, to think of what a hassle it is to grind 100k gold and that it'd be worth less than a dollar... it's amazing how little some people are prepared to value their own time.

Not really, the value comes from enjoying the game. The extra couple of $ is just nice

[Mormolyce]

Not really, the value comes from enjoying the game. The extra couple of $ is just nice

Yeah but I wouldn't enjoy losing 100k out of my stash and only getting a few measly cents in return :P

[Nilinor]

When RMAH goes live new items will be added to the game with better stats and new abilities that arent on any current gear so that there is no "flood" of items/legendaries/set pieces to be spammed and people can actually make money instead of 2-3 dollars, on top of that, I think they will also be "difficulty" specific to make them even more rare and hard to come by, so to get the absolute perfect item, you have to be lucky pretty much.

That way its still viable when it comes out.

[klaps_05]

im betting RMAH wont have a limit of 10 auctions, that will 1) kill the gold AH and 2) make craptons of money from microtransactions