Coming Soon: Battle.net Balance

[Waylander]

QQ we have no resources for innovative content, but hey, check out our new store feature$!

[Culexus]

Oh the QQ will be immense ... i guess i will be avoiding the forums for some days.

On topic: This was expected.

[mitbrandir]

My question: does all the game time that i payed for in 7 years also give me this?

[probert]

Ah so rather than paying you direct, they pay your balance instead.. keeping hold of the money a little longer and tempting you into spending it on blizzard services?

Exactly. Once hard currency enters the foodchain, they will do everything they can to prevent it from leaving. This 'wallet' approach was always the end game. They can earn interest on a reserve fund of liquid cash they'll keep on hand for payouts until its 'consumed' through internal services.

I am hoping that Diablo 3 is a viable game to play without resorting to auction house items and real $ transactions. But everything points to 'no', and in an effort to protect wow subscriptions they'll sacrifice Diablo 3 game integrity. They've already sacrificed Diablo 3 boxed sales to save wow subscribers; somethign i never thought they'd do.

\yes i have a Tyrael horse
\\upon reflection, would not have signed up for the annual pass, although i'll get enough value out of it not to be disappointed.

[Argroth]

Coming soon (TM) another way we can suck even more morons to shell out ridiculous amounts of money on objects we work 3 minutes on and typically give out 100s in a $15 monthly charge.

[Dasn]

Nice change, unafortunaly that will not bring back the 1, 000 000 users u lost this year. Skyrim FTW

i lol'd

skyrim will only last for a month more or so

[Skippy88]

Disney Dollars?

No no no. Monopoly money. Be right back have to go raid the game. It's going to suck the next time we play though.

Depending on the finer details I like this feature.

[Nerraw]

Seems like it's the new black for game companies to have their own currency these days. I might be using it if I manage to sell something in D3, but not otherwise.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

If you really read this, all that it is really for is the D3 auction house. All the WoW services can still use a credit card or real cash. This is just the middle-man for the D3 auction house. You put your money into the "station cash" and then use that in D3, and you can pull your "station cash" into actual cash. But of course, players will say this proves WoW is dying and going F2P and that blizz will sell gold, and epics, etc.

[ildon]

I long for the day when I can exchange my Disney Dollars, Linden Dollars, and BitCoins for BlizzardBux.

[Deleted]

This is the first step towards the "freemium" WoW.You can play the game for free and certain parts have to be bought (like heroics, raids, ranked pvp, outdoor pvp zone participation) with the blizzard cash. You can earn that cash by pumping in real money or by being clever with the auction house. This doesnt have to be a bad thing.

[bigfoot1291]

My question: does all the game time that i payed for in 7 years also give me this?

Give you what, exactly? There's no giving. This is just a currency converter for storing money in your blizzard account, essentially.

[dlouhys]

They're giving us an ability to use D3 gold to pay for future games. Someone explain to me how that screws over the customer?

[Rushro]

So it's okay for Steam, Xbox Live, and PSN to do it, but Blizzard can't. Makes sense. People are trying too hard to make Blizzard look like the second coming of the Nazi party.

[Hyve]

*puts on helmet*

The amount of complaints that are about to land! I can feel them! *trembles in fear*

On-topic: Sounds nice. It wont lead to purchasable epics or items, but people will still complain.

[Ryme]

So it's okay for Steam, Xbox Live, and PSN to do it, but Blizzard can't. Makes sense. People are trying too hard to make Blizzard look like the second coming of the Nazi party.

It's not OK there either, people still complain about it to this day.

[Necrolepsy]

So in essence, you can get money into youir Battle.net balance account, but you can't transfer it to your bank account / card.

YAY BLI$$ARD! Seriously why the hell is this company still supported, it beats me. Must be nostalgia, from when they were good.

[Repefe]

Does this mean there will be no subscription for WoW ?

[phuzi0n]

Hmm, so with Diablo 3 real currency AH I can either choose to send money to paypal which I can then spend on whatever I want for whoever I want using any currency, or I can send it to my blizzard balance which will only allow me to buy blizzard products from blizzard (not always the best deal) and can never cash it out into real money. This is great for their revenue but useless for their customers.

Are there any fees associated with using Battle.net Balance? Blizzard Entertainment does not charge additional fees to add to your Battle.net Balance or to use it to buy Blizzard Entertainment products. However, there are listing and transaction fees associated with the Diablo III currency-based auction house, regardless of the payment type.

What the hell? They better not have a real currency LISTING fee on the currency based AH. I can understand taking a cut of successful sales and a GAME CURRENCY listing fee to keep every piece of junk from being listed, but it's bad to make people pay real currency to TRY to sell a virtual item. People should be able to earn money without having to spend any.

[subanark]

So in essence, you can get money into youir Battle.net balance account, but you can't transfer it to your bank account / card.

YAY BLI$$ARD! Seriously why the hell is this company still supported, it beats me. Must be nostalgia, from when they were good.

Blizzard doesn't want people to launder "drug money" though their services. You can cash out money you make on D3, as long as you don't place it in the Blizzard Balance. The only other way to get funds is by depositing them using your own money. Although you can't gift this money to other players (for the same reason that you can't cash out), they will probably let you buy services for other players, like paying for your friends server transfer.

This system is better and more transparent than Microsoft or Nintendo points since it tracks currency interdependently instead of converting everything to their own currency. Although you won't gain interest, they won't simply devalue your own money you put in directly, and you are free to put in any amount you want instead of having left over points like other systems.