Real money Auction House in World of Warcraft

[McNeil]

I'd unsub instantly the moment I will hear that news. I really hated how Diablo 3 was built on the RMAH, it really ruined the game for me.

I wonder what other MMORPG I should go to after WoW... probably GW2 or Rift

[Pann]

See, we're going in circles. You keep saying the same thing, and I keep explaining why your way of thinking is invalid. We know what people should logically do (aka not spend money if they don't have to), be we know what people actually do (spend their disposable income). Diablo 3's RMAH is case-and-point, no one HAD to spend money on that system. Everything was obtainable in game or in the regular gold AH. Yet.....people spent the money anyway.

Does that help any?

The whole loot system in D3 was designed around the the RMAH. The items sold on the RMAH in D3 were usually extremely rare drops, you could play the game for years and never see the drop you need thus there is an incentive for players to use the RMAH. This is not the case in WOW, first you have to allow rare bind on pickup items to be sold, no one is going to buy something they can craft themselves. You also run into the problem that compared to the number of people running raids the loot tables are tiny with several thousand people raiding each week it would only be a matter of time before supply outstripped demand. Then you have to make the items desirable why would someone spend money on the RMAH when the item they are buying will be useless in a matter of months when a new patch is released?

[Regalbeast]

I would quit immediately.....actually I'm not currently playing, but this would make it so I NEVER came back.

[Orbitus]

on gamefaqs.com there was a guy complaining that he lost his staff when he died on D3... but the real reason he raged was because he dropped $70+ on it in the RMAH.



....now, imagine how much money people would carelessly spend if it were in wow.

See theres a huge problem with this statement. There is no RMAH in the hardcore side of it. So either he lied to you or you just made this up.

[JohnnyTheCherriesLover]

Gold buying is already unofficially supported through tcg pets and mounts as well as the Blizzard store pets.

Besides there isn't really much that you can do with gold in wow since the best gear is BoP and comes from raiding, I suppose you could buy a few pieces off rmah, but other than that not really.

So I wouldn't really care about wow rmah if it was added tomorrow.

[mvaliz]

No thank you; pay to win systems are awful.

I STILL can't get this idea of "pay to win" that people say across my head. Win exactly WHAT!? You make it sound like WoW is some kind-of olympic sport - that it's some amazing attainable achievement if you win....um...exactly what? Realm first on a boss? A PVP duel? /twirls fingers... whoop-de-do...

Are olympic athletes paying to win because they can PAY for personal trainers and purchase the best high-tech equipment to increase their stats and abilities for their olympic challenge?

EDIT: Do Golf players "Pay to Win" because they can find the best crafted golf-clubs with the perfect weight/counter-weight balance?

Dude... it's a video game. If somebody's so daft as to want to pay real-life money for stats in a video game, I'm MORE than willing to exchange some pixels for a 6 month subscription to Netflix. :P

[Cinnamohn]

I'd make like a squirrel with a golf club and find two nuts.

[mvaliz]

What even gave you the idea that the unannounced feature is a RMAH?

What even gave you the idea that the OP believes the unannounced feature is a RMAH? :P

He's just asking a hypothetical question... from what I gather he's not acting/believing it's an RMAH, just postulating an idea for discussion amongst the community.

---------- Post added 2013-02-03 at 10:07 PM ----------

I'd make like a squirrel with a golf club and find two nuts.

...I'm picturing a Squirrel eating one of the nuts, then burring the other nut. After he buries the nut, he begins to ponder why he's dragging around a golf club that weights twice as much as himself... :P

[bufferunderrun]

I don't think so diablo 3 was build around the new AH, both gold and real money, wow is not; and no modify the entire game in a way that require ten time the efforts and times used to revamp Azeroth in cata, with the risk of pissing alot of customers and lose money, is not an option.

[Pann]

I STILL can't get this idea of "pay to win" that people say across my head. Win exactly WHAT!? You make it sound like WoW is some kind-of olympic sport - that it's some amazing attainable achievement if you win....um...exactly what? Realm first on a boss? A PVP duel? /twirls fingers... whoop-de-do...

Are olympic athletes paying to win because they can PAY for personal trainers and purchase the best high-tech equipment to increase their stats and abilities for their olympic challenge?

Dude... it's a video game. If somebody's so daft as to want to pay real-life money for stats in a video game, I'm MORE than willing to exchange some pixels for a 6 month subscription to Netflix. :P

To a certain degree I agree with what you are saying but WOW is a never ending treadmill of gear collection by allowing players to pay to get ahead others on the treadmill you invalidate the efforts of those left behind. You don't have to spend long reading these boards to see that some are of the opinion that gear is the route to admiration and respect from others, ultimately this is what they aspire to win, and it those players who would be most affected by a scrub being able to equip the same gear as them.

[RickJamesLich]

I wouldn't be surprised if they did a RMAH one day, knowing the money they could make off of it, I'm sure it'd only be a matter of time lol. As for people saying "it'd never happen", blizz has changed their stance on many things that they said "would never happen".

[Deleted]

If this ever gets added it will be the day I will quit playing WoW forever. I have no interest in my country's IRS taxing me for playing an MMO just because whatever my characters own now has a real life value to it.

[Eroginous]

Three reasons RMAH will not be added to Wow:

1. Wow is a subscription based game, and Blizzard generates their revenue from that sub fee + box sales. D3 is not a sub based game, and once they sell the box to someone, the only way they have to make any more money is by taking a cut of the RMAH sales fees.

2. Loot in Wow is not compatible with such a model. Everything has set stat rolls and is for the most part BoP, coming from quests, dungeons, crafting, and raids. Loot in D3 is all randomly rolled and none of it's BoP. Even the most legendary of legendary items can be thrown on the AH willy nilly, and thus RMAH represents a good model for a game that would otherwise be selling items on the internet in an unsafe way.

3. There is no global AH. The reason why RMAH works in D3 is because everyone uses the same AH no matter what server/game you connect to. Blizzard would have to combine each AH server like they did with CRZ, and we all know how problematic that was.

[mosely]

I can't find the link (im sure someone could) but during the Mists beta and when the RMAH was announced for D3 Blizz specifically said that it would not be added into WoW. So I am fairly sure that it is not the "new idea" that will be the game changer of Mists

There have been plenty of things that Blizzard had said would not be added to WoW. For example, there used to be a time when you could not have characters from both factions on the same server, and there used to be a time when it was not possible to transfer from a PvE server to a PvP one.

Don't believe for a second that an RMAH is somehow so morally reprehensible of a concept that it could never be added to the game.

[Velthy]

To sell what? Leg enchants for 5 cents?
Ridiculous idea, wont happen.

[mvaliz]

Three reasons RMAH will not be added to Wow:

1. Wow is a subscription based game, and Blizzard generates their revenue from that sub fee + box sales. D3 is not a sub based game, and once they sell the box to someone, the only way they have to make any more money is by taking a cut of the RMAH sales fees.

WoW was originally not designed to be sub-based. The only reason it went sub-based was because at the time it wasn't financially feesable to support the server tech without it. (at least, that's the reason Blizz gave in 2004).

Now, having said that, I'm SURE they're not going to drop a sub-base anytime soon... but I'm sure they have some potential "magic number" where they can drop the subs in favor of an RMAH. The RMAH could be MORE profitable if, say, 20k+ players came on and even 10% bought/uploaded XYZ amounts of items on the RMAH.

2. Loot in Wow is not compatible with such a model. Everything has set stat rolls and is for the most part BoP, coming from quests, dungeons, crafting, and raids. Loot in D3 is all randomly rolled and none of it's BoP. Even the most legendary of legendary items can be thrown on the AH willy nilly, and thus RMAH represents a good model for a game that would otherwise be selling items on the internet in an unsafe way.

It's probably not that hard to script something that the RMAH can recognize BoP items...

...Of course that's assuming that BoP items WOULD be tradable via an RMAH... and not just stick to the basic BoE/crafting mats that the AH now supports.

I don't see any reason why they wouldn't just do an RMAH with the current AH-accessible items. People still would purchase other goods and items, not just best-in-slot gear. I mean, it's not that far of a stretch considering Blizzard made specific pets AH-able for the ability to, and I quote directly from them, "have a safe alternative to purchasing gold".

They'll just spin the same looney logic onto it's audience that they did with the AH-Pets: "A World of Warcraft RMAH will provide a safe alternative for those purchasing from known hacking sites, and thusly will cut down on security problems and provide a safer/better gaming experience as a result."

3. There is no global AH. The reason why RMAH works in D3 is because everyone uses the same AH no matter what server/game you connect to. Blizzard would have to combine each AH server like they did with CRZ, and we all know how problematic that was.

Not a few months ago, Blizzard introduced the Cross-realm Zones... Are you're seriously thinking that cross-realm AH is somehow BEYOND that? :P

You do realize that D3 showcases the tech CAN work, right? It's almost like a beta-test if you look at it. Combining the WoW AH's with each other should theoretically be just taking the tech and lessons learned from D3 and applying it to WoW, particularly via the CRZ tech.

[schwarzkopf]

Won't ever happen.

I think RMAH in WoW would be the single change which would have me stop WoWing for good.

I've seen what it has done in D3 - and it sucks enough in that environment.

---------- Post added 2013-02-04 at 05:56 AM ----------

You do realize that D3 showcases the tech CAN work, right?

Actually D3 shows how the tech works, but it also shows how the idea is a complete fail.

[mvaliz]

I think RMAH in WoW would be the single change which would have me stop WoWing for good.

I've seen what it has done in D3 - and it sucks enough in that environment.

I've seen a lot of problems with D3 - not all of them seem to stem from the existence of the RMAH. Piss-poor endgame is one of these problems... to think they'd actually expect a decade-old concept like "repeat the entire game on harder mode" to fly with today's RPG players (whom many weren't even SPERM when Diablo 2 was at it's height) is beyond logic or reason. :P

[Eroginous]

WoW was originally not designed to be sub-based.

It's probably not that hard to script something that the RMAH can recognize BoP items...

Not a few months ago, Blizzard introduced the Cross-realm Zones... Are you're seriously thinking that cross-realm AH is somehow BEYOND that? :P

I'm not saying Blizzard can't or won't do any of that, I'm just saying that the likely hood of them ever doing any of that is small, considering the huge impact those things would have on the game (backlash too), and you have to consider what a miserable state the game would have to be in for them to even consider such a thing.

/shrug

[MasterHamster]

I've seen a lot of problems with D3 - not all of them seem to stem from the existence of the RMAH. Piss-poor endgame is one of these problems... to think they'd actually expect a decade-old concept like "repeat the entire game on harder mode" to fly with today's RPG players (whom many weren't even SPERM when Diablo 2 was at it's height) is beyond logic or reason. :P

It's not like it really matters how long people stay in D3, being a one time purchase
Just like D2, players who don't enjoy repeating the game to improve their characters will leave and those who want to devote the time will stay
But unlike D2, D3 has a lot of competition and it's unlikely it'll get anywhere close a similar cult following

You asked what is pay-to-win in WoW, and there was a quite clear post on that
There is a PvE "race" in WoW, that D3 doesn't have. It's mostly coop, so buying gear has no negative impact on others... well I'm certain there will be complaints unless Blizzard adds PvP with those with RMAH items separate from those who doesn't, but yeah.
I could just imagine if WoWs most hardcore guilds could buy BiS items and just fly through content. Even regular guilds asking their members to buy trinkets and weapons to speed up progression..

Nah, in WoW this system would be utterly destructive to the game