If RMAH ruined your gaming experience

[Spoiledkid]

Please post and tell us why do you feel that way.

For me, it changed Diablo 3 to totally different game. Now I'm selling anything that's valuable (and I know it will sell) in RMAH and I feel I lose money if I spent gold on my own gear in Gold AH. And when I sell stuff in GAH, I use it on items I can sell in RMAH (can get over 20 euros per million spend in GAH so it is just too good deal to pass).

So my focus is now on how I make as much money as I can and other things have become lot less important. And I don't like it.

[BLCalliente]

Auction house in general ruined a lot of my friends' gaming experience.

I can't think of how many times a new player would join a game I'm playing and I'd give them some snazzy loot to get them going.

Not anymore! Gotta sell that stuff for REAL MONEY baby!!!

[Deleted]

well, it's simple, as long as inferno gives 99.9% crap loot, I'll consider RMAH as a scam that blizz tries to force me to use.

if they lower the crap rate to about 95%, I'm not greedy, then maybe I'll tolerate RMAH.

On the other hand the GAH wasn't such a bad idea, If it wasn't so poorly implemented, with every part of the AH UI lacking vital features to make it comfortable to use... it could actually be a strong gameplay component, a nice alternative to the classic lottery hack and slash. At the moment its clearly not.

[kushlol]

I wouldn't say the RMAH ruined my gaming experience as I've made $400 using it but I still do not like it. I also hope the future of games isn't paying real life money for in game items.

[Synche]

I have sold 1 piece of gear for 1.50$ and haven't bought anything.

I hardly even use the GAH for anything other than gear upgrades while leveling, once I got to 60 I farmed gear myself, maybe bought a piece of two if I was unlucky with drops. It has almost no effect on my gameplay , I simply enjoy Diablo 3 as it is.

I wouldn't say the RMAH ruined my gaming experience as I've made $400 using it but I still do not like it. I also hope the future of games isn't paying real life money for in game items.

The RMAH is more or less run by the players, Blizzard just gives us the tools necessary and they take their cut, but the players themselves make the most money from it. It really depends on what other devs see in this model, as it essentially provides income after the game has launched to continue to work on it (patches etc) without "dipping into the coffers" so to speak.

[Riptide]

Auction house in general ruined a lot of my friends' gaming experience.

I can't think of how many times a new player would join a game I'm playing and I'd give them some snazzy loot to get them going.

Not anymore! Gotta sell that stuff for REAL MONEY baby!!!

I suppose you could look at it that way. But you still choose to sell it for real money. That option has always been available and it was always a lucrative one.

I mean the auction houses in generally do absolutely nothing as far as I'm concerned. I had the very best item in d2, we're not talking runewords or uniques, we're talking godlies. I'll still have the best items in d3 and use whatever avenue I have to get me there. Maybe it makes the items harder to get because more people are privy to what is good and what is not? I don't know.

What I do know is that there are lots of players like myself who will use whatever means they have to get to an end(without cheating, though some feel the same way and with cheating). So the auction houses makes little difference to me the items were already there. They were already going to have a monetary value with or without the RMAH. So to me it makes little difference. Botting on the other hand makes a huge difference.

I guess if I was less informed this would be mind-blowing stuff but digital goods for real money has been happening for decades.

[Mnevis]

I wouldn't say it's ruined my experience; I enjoy the game.

However, I would enjoy it more if decent gear dropped more often, and I do believe they set the crap:decent ratio pretty damn high with the AH (in general) in mind. Also it kinda sucks that the best fist with spirit/socket/dex I could bid on in the GAH is 50 dps lower than the best one I could get from the RMAH, but that's not all that troubling.

[Kujako]

The RMAH is more or less run by the players, Blizzard just gives us the tools necessary and they take their cut, but the players themselves make the most money from it.

Most items on the RMAH are listed at 1.25$, of which Blizzard gets a dollar and the player gets a quarter.

[cFortyfive]

In a certain way probably. I certainly will admit that giving away stuff feels different knowing that you can get 200+ euro on the rmah.

[NightZero88]

Ruined it for me because everyone only sells the really good stuff on the RMAH. I won't ever pay money for virtual crap so I basically get screwed out of items because Blizz wants to make more money.

Also, call me a conspiracy theorist or that I need a new tinfoil hat but the whole thing with "mistakenly" buffing Natalya's set (how do you go from .2 to 2 without anyone noticing, really) and leaving it so people shell out money for it then nerfing it saying it wasn't intentional so we're just fixing it even though we don't like jacking with people's existing gear so people will try and unload it for a quick profit again netting Blizz more money is BS.

[Creotor]

Can't say it ruined it, but it certainly changed it. Haven't used it once, yet.
Loot is now a full-fledged, real world commodity, so just giving it away is no longer an option to many, including me. Loot was also sold for $ in D2, but that typically meant the very best items.

[Gsara]

They made their money just off box sales, close to $400,000,000, everything else is just icing on that huge cake of fail.

[Rife]

There is no longer a sense of gearing progression in Inferno. I like having to work/grind for my items and character progress. I like feeling stronger today than I was a week ago. I like knowing that the gear I'm walking around in and the champion packs I can smash because of that gear is a result of effort and hours spent grinding for upgrades. Inferno doesn't have this. The most effective way to gear in Inferno is by playing the AH and buying gear or using your credit card. Any game that allows players to gear up without actually zoning into the world and play their character is piss poor design. Gearing up is nothing more than making bank.

An argument can be made for gearing up from drops/crafting alone while ignoring the AH. I would be all for this IF the AH method wasn't so vastly superior. Farming for one excellent upgrade can take days, but being able to purchase excellent upgrades from the AH only takes a few hours of gold/mat/gem farming. I wouldn't be surprised if the time investment needed for gearing by drops was 10 to 20 times higher than by using the AH and that is just too great to be viable by any definition of the word.

Ultimately, it makes me look at every peice of gear as nothing more than a gold value. I don't think to myself "these Inferno champion packs are too hard, i need to go farm better gear", instead I think "this Inferno pack is too much for my gear level, I need more gold" and getting gold isn't a challenge, which is why it's so boring. Being able to sit back and say "Inferno is very easy with 100m" doesn't make me want to play. It makes the whole process of gear/progression so blatently obvious that I'm not compelled to play. D3 needed a good progression system coupled with distractions/variations/personalisation within that system to keep players entertained. Being able to gear and play the way I like is a big reason to continue playing, unfortunately that isn't viable in Inferno. You have 2/3 viable routes for your character and nothing more. Each of those styles requires very specific gear sets and everything else is completely, utterly, useless (life steal).

The whole AH shitshow wouldn't be as bad if other areas of the game weren't so shit either. So i probably gets more than its fair share of abuse.

[Caiada]

It's not Blizzard's fault you don't understand that there will (soon enough) be a conversion for money to gold and vice versa and hence the market as a whole.

I personally play games for fun, not rewards, so it, and the AH in general, haven't bothered me remotely since their announcement.

[Rife]

They made their money just off box sales, close to $400,000,000, everything else is just icing on that huge cake of fail.

I think you misplaced a decimal there. There is no way they made almost half a billion dollars from Diablo 3.

[Deleted]

6,4m sold in 1st week x 60euro = 384 000 000, so its prolly above 400 m now

[Creotor]

6.3 million people had it within the first week. Somewhere between 1.2m and 1.3m of those were Annual Pass holders. So, 5m in the first week, unless I'm missing something. 5m x $60 = 300m. I'm not sure how many bought it afterwards, but I think it's a safe bet at least close to a million more people ended up buying it within the next month. Some of that was also in Euros, which is still more "expensive" than a dollar, I think? Even if not, they'd be close. So, around 350m, easily.

And I'm sure they had already made a somewhat hefty sum from the RMAH. Not nearly as much as from sales, but with time, that'll probably change.

[igame]

Yep, the game seems to be built around AH, at least from my experience (I might just have really crap luck).

[Gsara]

6.3 million people had it within the first week. Somewhere between 1.2m and 1.3m of those were Annual Pass holders. So, 5m in the first week, unless I'm missing something. 5m x $60 = 300m. I'm not sure how many bought it afterwards, but I think it's a safe bet at least close to a million more people ended up buying it within the next month. Some of that was also in Euros, which is still more "expensive" than a dollar, I think? Even if not, they'd be close. So, around 350m, easily.

And I'm sure they had already made a somewhat hefty sum from the RMAH. Not nearly as much as from sales, but with time, that'll probably change.

The AP holders were not included in the 6.3 million sold. That number came from paid digital d/ls and box sales through retailers.

---------- Post added 2012-06-26 at 07:51 PM ----------

I think you misplaced a decimal there. There is no way they made almost half a billion dollars from Diablo 3.

3.5 million sold in the first 24 hours, not including AP holders. 6.3 million sales in the first week, not including AP holders. Reports are for paid d/l and box sales.

[Trotheus]

Shrug... I did it illicitly in EQ and WoW. Now I can sell stuff legitimately. My only complaint is having to have a phone with texting capability to do it legitimately. But then, going legitimate is always more difficult. It's why people go illicit.