A potential problem with the RMAH that nobody is considering...

[mvaliz]

There was a thread on the WoW forum I just made a post in where I talked about a potential problem with the RMAH and why I feel it MIGHT not go over as well as people are expecting...

I felt it appropriate enough to copy it here for any feedback, as I feel this might actually become a massive problem (Or advantage for a hardcore D3 gamer! Depending on your perspective! ^_^)

Having said that... it all started with this quote here:

the real money AH in D3 is gonna be a HIT mark my word right now, this will cash a lot of money for blizzard trust me, Why? because everyone will want their chance at money while playign a game, some people already plan out to do it their living, srly How could you not take this into account, Pretyy sure they will many many xpack to D3 to keep it goign for a long time.

See, the thing is - I actually did agree 100% with the way this guy is thinking... but, recently, I've been quietly looking at the bigger picture of things - and I came down to a VERY scary observation.

That observation comes down to ONE major factor... something I think a lot of people are missing...

•) There is only ONE AH market for the entire North American region (subsequent regions have their own too).

People are regarding the D3 RMAH in the same vein of WoW's current AH Marketplace, but you have to remember that WoW's AH markets are split/divided in MANY ways....

First, the AH markets are divided by server... there are literally hundreds of servers out there for North America, and that means hundreds of smaller markets not-connected to each other with their own users.

Second, those individual server markets are literally HALVED when you consider there are TWO separate AHs (Horde and Alliance).

Imagine what would happen if you made one gigantic universal AH Market, where horde/alliance AH markets were merged into one and every item on every North American WoW AH market can be viewed and bought all in the same window?

THAT is what Diablo 3 will be!

Think you hate AH competition now? Imagine that now times x100...

And that's COUPLED with what was said above in that quote... the fact that it's now REAL money is going to make people 10x more competitive than ever before...

Honestly, I think the RMAH might prove to be a massive disaster as everything is going to be literally nickels and dimes and nobody's going to make any money due to there being so much damn competition in the same place. Sure, it's great for the gamer - but is it really going to be that profitable for Blizz when people are spending pennies instead of dollars? And how will people react when they're literally only getting pennies instead of dollars for their work?

What say you all?

[Herecius]

Also worth remembering that while there will be 100x more people using the AH, ultra-rare items are also 100x tougher to find in Diablo, so.. it may balance out.

[mvaliz]

Also worth remembering that while there will be 100x more people using the AH, ultra-rare items are also 100x tougher to find in Diablo, so.. it may balance out.

a 100x tougher (so Blizz claims) for an individual player to find on his own. Sure. But, When mixed in with however many millions of players it will have, that's how many billions of chances for an Ultra-rare to drop? What are the odds of finding an ultra-rare item on the AH then?

[Herecius]

a 100x tougher (so Blizz claims) for an individual player to find on his own. Sure. But, When mixed in with however many millions of players it will have, that's how many billions of chances for an Ultra-rare to drop? What are the odds of finding an ultra-rare item on the AH then?

Well, that's kinda what I meant. If there's 100x as many people posting items on the AH, but only 1/100th the number of items, it balances out. In theory.

Or the RMAH is going to be flooded with tens of thousands of items. I could be wrong. :P

[Caiada]

Don't forget that that means there's 100 times more potential buyers. Increasing the size of a market like this doesn't really have the changes you want to think it does.

[Deleted]

It sounds like a really obvious statement, but it all comes down to if the demand meets or exceeds the supply then prices will be high. If not, prices will be low.

It's really hard to tell at the moment, because yes, it is one server so there is a LOT of people listing items - but then that also works as, there's also a lot of people buying items. If the whole scale is larger than one WoW server then it doesn't come down to whether there are more people to one AH, but simply how the supply & demand ratio works out.

[Deleted]

It's pretty much virtual ebay, look how successful ebay has become. I think a small amount of savy people are going to make a hell of alot of money especially if you manage to get a North American copy of the game.

In my experience it's always the Americans that are willing to shell out big $$ for virtual property. On an old MUD game where buying selling characters wasn't against the TOS, I sold 2 characters for $1000. I can honestly say I could never see a European shelling out that amount of cash for fantasy make believe, all the money I ever made in that game always came from the Americans.

I could try to speculate what the reasons for that are but that's an entirely different thread all together!

[mvaliz]

It's pretty much virtual ebay, look how successful ebay has become. I think a small amount of savy people are going to make a hell of alot of money especially if you manage to get a North American copy of the game.

In my experience it's always the Americans that are willing to shell out big $$ for virtual property. On an old MUD game where buying selling characters wasn't against the TOS, I sold 2 characters for $1000. I can honestly say I could never see a European shelling out that amount of cash for fantasy make believe, all the money I ever made in that game always came from the Americans.

I could try to speculate what the reasons for that are but that's an entirely different thread all together!

Again, normally I would agree with ebay analogy - but on ebay there's a million things for a million different walks of life. In Diablo, there's a million things for 5 types of people... wizards, monks, demon hunters, witch doctors and barbarians.

And, lets not forget that this is a down economy - meaning that there's going to be a lot more people selling than spending money on a game. =/

[Caiada]

Again, normally I would agree with ebay analogy - but on ebay there's a million things for a million different walks of life. In Diablo, there's a million things for 5 types of people... wizards, monks, demon hunters, witch doctors and barbarians.

And, lets not forget that this is a down economy - meaning that there's going to be a lot more people selling than spending money on a game. =/

That doesn't mean anything in terms of supply versus demand. There are a bunch of people who want to gear their characters. There are a bunch of people who want to sell stuff. That ratio is only affected by the willingness for people to pay money for the RMAH, and nothing else. Whether that's affected by the economy, or how good those items are, or anything like that, none of it's got anything to do with, for example, the number of classes. BiS in Diablo is a foreign concept.

[Fencers]

It might be nickles & dimes, but I am not sure the RMT AH will be a failure if one can not make their rent check via D3.

Moreover, it's a simple economic model: supply & demand.

[Slaughty8]

This AH will pretty much be like EVE Online Jita market, where You have bidwars 24/7 and traders got bots for bidwars, you get outbided for 1 ISK @ items worth milions. This sucks.

[grandpab]

I'm kinda wondering how many people actually plan on using the rmah to spend money. Everybody wants to sell their items, but there won't be near as many people that will be buying items. There's gonna be a lot of supply, and a low demand causing extreme undercutting and low prices.

That's what I see happening at least.

[Fencers]

I'm kinda wondering how many people actually plan on using the rmah to spend money. Everybody wants to sell their items, but there won't be near as many people that will be buying items. There's gonna be a lot of supply, and a low demand causing extreme undercutting and low prices.

That's what I see happening at least.

I plan on spending some cash if the item is worthwhile to me.

Looking at F2P games with an open AH, players of those games are willing to spend literal thousands of dollars. There was even a recent browser game that was selling $1k spaceships and they sold 2,000 of them in a month or something.

True these items are being sold by a publisher directly. But when asking if players will spend money for virtual item- the answer clearly seems to be yes.

With the enormous player base D3 will most likely have over other online games, it's pretty much a masterstroke of industry changing import D3 has a RMT AH.

[Dhurn]

The randomized aspect of the game makes having a far greater contributing base fine. Yes it would be a disaster if there were 1247 Obsidium Cleavers all with the exact same stats and undercutting each other to the ground. Thankfully it's not WoW though, so the chance of finding an amazing item is far less, THEN you have to factor in the randomized affixes/suffixes/values also!

I don't think it will have the issues you think it will, even if 10 million people are farming the chances of finding a rare item with identical stats and qualities is still very low. Therefore undercutting is less of an issue because it not such a cut and dry "well these have the exact same stats but one is 50c cheaper, easy choice"

[Skelly]

I'm kinda wondering how many people actually plan on using the rmah to spend money. Everybody wants to sell their items, but there won't be near as many people that will be buying items. There's gonna be a lot of supply, and a low demand causing extreme undercutting and low prices.

That's what I see happening at least.

There will be a limited number of people putting money into the system. But the people that just want to sell will end up taking the money they make and buying stuff with it, putting the money back into the system.

[Kisho]

Making a mountain out of a molehill with this one. A bigger AH brings more competition, sure: but it also brings more buyers. The ratio should (theoretically speaking) remain the same, and as such the ability to buy and sell items should not be negatively affected. If anything it'll be a positive thing.

Non-issue IMO. But as always, we have to wait until it goes live before we can make a final judgement call on it! (and even then with the ability to patch and fix stuff, things can and will change)

[mvaliz]

There will be a limited number of people putting money into the system. But the people that just want to sell will end up taking the money they make and buying stuff with it, putting the money back into the system.

I wouldn't count on that - especially in this economy.

I certainly don't have any intention of spending money I make into the RMAH, and I know I'm not the most original unique person on the planet either. :P

[Synche]

While I won't spend my money on anything , I will probably put the odd item up now and then. To me it is an added perk, not a necessity to succeed in the game. Even if I only make 5$, that is 5$ I wouldn't make if there was no RMAH. The best part of it is, due to the annual pass I get Diablo 3 for free, so I don't even have the cost of the game to make back

[hisnameismunky]

things to consider: the value of in game gold; listing fees. as long as there is a demand for gold, then the worst case scenario is a shift from RMAH to Gold AH when prices approach the listing fees. RMAH supply of items drops closer to the actual demand, and then a shift back from the gold AH to the RMAH.

[KrazyK923]

So first the Random auction house is going to destroy D3, and now it's going to be an abject failure?

People need to make up their minds.