How are people making so much money/gold?

[tibben]

i tried to sell a 2 hand hammer with around 180 dex 180 streng 180 int and 150 vit for like 1 M and people still wont buy it (hammmer has 1k dmg aswell)

There are about 7 melee players in the entire world that use 2 handed weapons. The other 2 million use a 1 hand + shield combo so they don't die repeatedly.

[SamR]

what a horribly incorrect statement.

What a funny response considering that I was giving the basic book definition of the word "inflation". I could link the actual definition of the word from various sources if you want...

BTW, there's a reason the Consumer Price Index is calculated using a basket of goods.

[BLCalliente]

No, they are interested in the in-game commodities that make them the real money. ie. gold. Therefore, the gold is what gets inflated. The other items they are interested in are the top tier items with good stats they snipe off the AH and re-sell for absurd amounts of gold. Therefore, gold and top end items are what they are interested in and the only items affected by the inflation.

Gold is not worth anything except as a means to get real money. Nobody who is a big enough player to actually change the economy (read: gold selling sites) wants gold. They want REAL MONEY. Blizzard has provided them with a near squeaky clean way to get REAL MONEY with the REAL MONEY AUCTION HOUSE.

Edit: On second thought, forget it. This is hopeless.

[forsaknice]

There are also people that get to play all day, or next to it. So they get to farm for hours on end.

[hulkgor]

People exploited the crap out of the game, and bots still run wild, with billions\trillions getting injected into the game daily. In 1-2 months, common\mediocre items will be posted for hundreds of millions.

Blizzard doesn't mind it, hoping people will need to resort to buying gold from the RMAH (with its minimum possible value on the rmah) and getting a nice slice of commodity sales.

The game is borked.

Really hoping for vast improvements and a possible ladder creation when i check back in a few months, otherwise, no point. game is sucky

[SamR]

In 1-2 months, common\mediocre items will be posted for hundreds of millions.

If that did happen, it would be the very definition of inflation. Doubt that will happen, though, because demand for common/medicore items keeps dropping as more and more people have characters that can easily farm that for themselves. At the same time, supply keeps expanding rapidly. Keep in mind that nothing is bound in this game. So the only way an item gets taken out of the pool is if someone vendors or salvages it.

The only sub-ilvl 61 items I even bother to list on the AH are rings/amulets and maybe especially well-rolled gloves/boots. Everything else is so cheap it's really not worth the time and AH slot to try to sell.

The extreme demand and supply imbalances in this game affects prices of goods way more than general gold inflation does.

[Rife]

Play the AH.

1. Find good items @ camparitively low prices
2. Relist them
3. Profit
4. Buy yourself gear without needing to play your character
5. Clear Inferno with ease

This works very well when abusing time zones and peak/off-peak times.

[Gsara]

Within the first week, alot of us were in pony land and act3/4 and made tons of gold and got tons of good items. I remember I sold my first 1k+ xbow for 10m, this was 3 days into the game, and it sold instantly. From there the prices just skyrocketed.

[Lathais]

Gold is not worth anything except as a means to get real money. Nobody who is a big enough player to actually change the economy (read: gold selling sites) wants gold. They want REAL MONEY. Blizzard has provided them with a near squeaky clean way to get REAL MONEY with the REAL MONEY AUCTION HOUSE.

Edit: On second thought, forget it. This is hopeless.

Of course they want gold, because the gold is what makes them the money. Also, the RMAh is NOT where they make the money. They make the money selling on third party sites. You cannot even buy/sell gold on the RMAH yet. They will buy gold from you though, and you can buy it from them. To say they are not interested in it is weird, considering they are "hacking" account to take the gold off them and running bots that farm gold exclusively.

As I tried to point out to you in the other thread, they do not use the RMAH, they sell via third party sites and trade with you in game. If you doubt me, try it. They will also buy gold from you, via a trade in game, not via the RMAH since you can't even sell it that way. They are bypassing the AH entirely as that cuts into their profits. The only thing they are doing on the AH is throwing their gold around to buy cheap stuff and selling things at overly inflated prices.

[david0925]

One of the main complaints of people trying to farm is that they can't sell anything they farm because prices on anything except the top end gear suck. Gold inflation would also mean that the stuff you farm sells for more.

It's like people who complain about inflation in WoW causing ore prices to be so high. Which is actually the best thing ever for new players because it means they can make tons of gold selling low level stuff as well.

Inflation means all prices go up.

50% increase on a stack of leather for 1g means it goes to 1.5g
50% increase on a purple cost 1000g means it goes to 1500g

This is assuming inflation rate is even for all commodities in the market, which is nowhere close to the actual case. This is also assuming that people's income increase evenly with the inflation rate, which is also nowhere close to the actual case.

This is also the reason inflation is a huge issue in real-life economy, despite what you may think.

[SamR]

50% increase on a stack of leather for 1g means it goes to 1.5g
50% increase on a purple cost 1000g means it goes to 1500g

This is assuming inflation rate is even for all commodities in the market, which is nowhere close to the actual case. This is also assuming that people's income increase evenly with the inflation rate, which is also nowhere close to the actual case.

This is also the reason inflation is a huge issue in real-life economy, despite what you may think.

Inflation is a huge issue in real-life economy because of sticky wages, inefficiencies introduced by unstable prices, and savings and fixed income assets being eaten away. If you're in debt, you actually benefit.

A MMO economy like WoW is an interesting thing because you never have to buy anything while leveling. And all the major costs you encounter(training costs, mounts, etc.) are fixed. So if you're a new player starting with zero gold, you benefit hugely from MMO inflation. You make lots of gold by selling stuff to rich players, and the things you do spend gold on are still stuck on a low low price.

The difference between Diablo 3 and WoW is that there's almost zero need to buy low level stuff. Low level commodities in WoW still sell and at higher levels than they did when they were the current materials. Low level commodities in Diablo 3 are pretty much worthless. The lack of demand has greatly outweighed any influence gold inflation might have had on prices of anything below level 60 in Diablo.

[Cludo]

So i stopped playing d3 for about a month because of school and stuff, and i come back to find the rmah is up, and apparently, people (for one, kripparian) have made hundreds of dollars, and millions of gold... are people actually buying for this kind of money? is there some trick? or am i just having ****y luck with drops, and don't know what to sell? i feel really tiny with my meager 350k lol.

Firstly, Kripp found out that his fans were watching his live stream as he put up a RMAH item and the die-hard would buy the item to 'Donate' to kripp :P

I've only made $20 so far, Just selling items for 3-5 dollars. Most of the time all my auctions will expire and nothing will sell.. Just put it back up.
Make sure to only attempt to sell level 60 stuff, i doubt under level 60 stuff will sell unless its really good item

[DeltrusDisc]

They run inferno runs on a daily basis, multiple of them, and they do it in quite good gear with enough magic/gold find.

I know one of my friends had sold a couple legendaries to make a few million gold early on, he then bought some truly exceptional pieces on the gold AH and sold them on the RMAH for $30~ or so each. He has made over $200 as of a few weeks ago, pretty much the day the RMAH went live.

[Deleted]

Streamers like kripp/athene get all sorts of gold/items handed to them by fanboys on a regular basis just so they can say "i've been in a game with him!", but as for how are the majority making crazy money? Botting.
Blizzard just simply do not care. There's no monthly sub, so there's no real reason to encourage people to stay playing the game once they've bought it, in fact, it would be less strain on the server's, so they probably enjoy it when people quit.
There will always be people willing to spend real life money on games for whatever reason(they don't like farming/ would rather work irl, then spend the money on a guarenteed upgrade/are a saudi prince)
And with these people spending real moeny, they are effectively making money for nothing. They are giving you a virtual currency for your real money, once that costs them absolutely nothing to make, and they have unlimited amounts of it.
When you sell an item, they take a €1 transaction fee, might not seem like a lot, but let's say there are still 6 million people playing. If everyone sells just one item on the AH, that's €6Million. Now add in all the players such as myself who have sold well over a hundred items, and you're sat on a goldmine.
You want to transfer those imaginary items that a bot probably farmed into real money? sure, but we're taking 15% of it too.
I would be REALLY interested in seeing the figured about how much profit they've earned from the RMAH alone, I have no doubt in my mind at all, that it would outweigh the actual box figures. Given that I personally have made them €31.46 through RMAH, without even trying. There are people out there botting 24/7 with multiple accounts, in toons better geared than myself, who I can guarentee are raking in more than they would if they were working a full time job.

Don't believe me? fine, here's some proof:
http://i.imgur.com/A1b19.jpg
€45: new account,
€17: bot access,
Currently on €116.43[€48.28/Bnet68.15] after 1 week of on and off botting for 2-3 hours a day.[forgot to change some of the items to paypal Q_Q.]
http://i.imgur.com/jI8YN.jpg
Started off in <1million gold's worth of gear, made everything you can see in the image, as well as anywhere from 600k-1million an hour depending on spawns and item drops.

You can say whatever you want, about me ruining the game or whatever but the simple fact is, that the game doesn't stand a chance with blizzards current stance on botting, especially when there's potential huge real life profits at stake too.

[Keosen]

You can say whatever you want, about me ruining the game or whatever but the simple fact is, that the game doesn't stand a chance with blizzards current stance on botting, especially when there's potential huge real life profits at stake too.

Exactly, Blizzard with RMAH just gave another reason to boters to....keep botting, the game itself almost begging you to bot, boting became serious business.

When the commodities RMAH will be online, you could get a bot and earn a refund in no time and on top of that you will make profit and if you get ban who cares, just buy another account and another bot with the earnings, and so on.

The game is F.U.B.A.R.

[levandor]

Exactly, Blizzard with RMAH just gave another reason to boters to....keep botting, the game itself almost begging you to bot, boting became serious business.

When the commodities RMAH will be online, you could get a bot and earn a refund in no time and on top of that you will make profit and if you get ban who cares, just buy another account and another bot with the earnings, and so on.

The game is F.U.B.A.R.

How is this any different from Diablo 2?

maphack was widely used, bots (pindlebot for example) have been widely used, gold was complettly and uterrly worthless, like its going to be in D3 soon enough,
the auction house just replaced Ebay for the "common man" and it doesnt change a thing for the big companys, if you really want to get solid prices, do it the old fashioned way, be part of the community and use a trade forum.

[Deleted]

Yes, clearly it's a problem with people not recognizing good rares, and not MILLIONS of bots creating TRILLIONS of gold, thus causing hyperinflation and devaluing gold.

I think you're right, because I remember the very best items selling for 2 to 5 million tops when not many people were in Inferno.

Nowadays mediocre items are already 5 million, and very good items are 35 million.

Where do people get all that money from?
I barely have 600k and I haven't bought anything from the AH ever, so that's all I've made from drops.

How the hell can I compete? (yeah, farm and sell stuff, but I have extremely bad luck with drops)

---------- Post added 2012-06-27 at 11:08 AM ----------

Don't believe me? fine, here's some proof:
http://i.imgur.com/A1b19.jpg

Whoa, people run around with that much +% gold find? no wonder they make more money than me.

But I also suspect to know where the problem lies.
These botters must be running Normal or Nightmare, since the gold that drops in each difficulty is mostly the same amount.

And since they're on such low difficulty, a bot can work just fine. It can not easily screw up since it's all very easy.

What Blizzard should do is increase the amount of gold that drops in each difficulty by a lot.
Most gold should drop in Inferno, where these items don't stand a chance due to too low survivability. That can stop bots.

[Deleted]

How the hell can I compete? (yeah, farm and sell stuff, but I have extremely bad luck with drops)

Just do whatever inferno farm spot you can, you will get something eventually .. Don't be too quick to salvage/sell stuff, some things sell for a surprisingly high amount .. I've made 2.5M in three act 1 farm runs, with nothing selling for more then 500k. Naturally luck is a factor, but knowing what stuff is worth is important aswell

[gibbie99]

Interesting thread. I predict a few things. In a few months the RMAH will be flooded but nobody will be buying because nobody will be playing. In the normal AH the prices will be so high that non-botters can't afford anything, and nothing will sell from there either.

My suggestion based on making tons from WoW (I haven't played D3 AH), is to get your feet wet. Once you start selling stuff at the same level then suddenly the world opens up. For example I can only relate to WoW again. While leveling my first toon i had maybe 100g. Nothing much. Once i dipped into the AH by selling a few things my gold climbed a bit and now I am to the point where I can make major market moves (like buying 500 stacks of whiptail) without blinking. Now that you are at that level things become a bit simpler. Hopefully this rambling makes sense. Start by selling what you can, and you will quickly get into the AH enough so that you can afford to buy MF gear, although since gold is worthless why would you want to ?

[Ravenblade]

[...]
Don't believe me? fine, here's some proof:

€45: new account,
€17: bot access,
Currently on €116.43[€48.28/Bnet68.15] after 1 week of on and off botting for 2-3 hours a day.[forgot to change some of the items to paypal Q_Q.]

Started off in <1million gold's worth of gear, made everything you can see in the image, as well as anywhere from 600k-1million an hour depending on spawns and item drops.

You can say whatever you want, about me ruining the game or whatever but the simple fact is, that the game doesn't stand a chance with blizzards current stance on botting, especially when there's potential huge real life profits at stake too.

Frankly put they could track you down with the item stats posted if they want to. Takes one sophisticated db query

I wasn't aware how easy botting still is and if that is true then it is truly depressing and one could ask himself whether they missed one of the major goals of the online-only implementation in first place.