Blame the corporate management, not developers.

[Jaxi]

Are you sure about that? Because in wow there wasnt any mounts or other items you could buy with real money, but instantly after the merge those kind of items appeared in store. Also game quality dropped shitload.

On July 9, 2008, Activision officially merged with Vivendi Games, culminating in the inclusion of the Blizzard brand name in the title of the resulting holding company, though Blizzard Entertainment remains a separate entity with independent management.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_Entertainment

[darkwarrior42]

Can somebody explain to me what is wrong with the RMAH?

In D2 when people bought bugged/duped items from a 3rd party website, did that effect you?

Do you use the RMAH? No? Well then it has no effect on you. Yes? Well great, you benefited from something that Blizzard put in.

2 things.

1) Not specific to the RMAH, but the existence of the AH means that drop rates are lower than they would be otherwise. Drop rates were tuned around the assumption that you would be using the AH, so people who don't want to use the AH wind up with lower drop rates through no fault of their own.

2) The RMAH is the reason for required online connectivity. While they didn't say this, it's the only logical explanation. DRM is not logical, since you could just require people to make a battle.net account and activate a license. If it's good enough for SC2, it's good enough for D3. Community doesn't make sense for people who aren't interested. But RMAH can make money for blizzard, and isn't worth anything if there aren't people online putting stuff up. Given how many people they lost as potential customers by requiring the online component, it makes sense they would only go through with it if they expected to receive appropriate compensation somewhere.

[Rosse88]

A little bit more information in regards to general business practices. What you are seeing, in all truth, probably is not greed.

First, the rule of business is to make money so that you can expand while maintaining stability. Given the nature of Blizzard's autonomy from Activision, the choices made were theirs and likely planned for some time. You have to also realize, as Im sure they do inhouse, that WoW is not a new game and has essentially reached it's peak (comparing the revenue from Eastern and Western subscriptions, growth is barely noticeable). Instead of just maintaining the status-quo, I would guess that they are using this time to test out ideas in the wild.

Second, growth requires experimentation. In actual business, once you enter your niche, it is very difficult to expand beyond it. Blizzard is online gaming (the change to SC2, Diablo, etc). In order to grow, they need to breach the standard of online gaming. Take for instance the manner in which Pixar grew. They started out with some love of the digital arts and science therein. But if you look at their short film tests, you see where their growing pains occurred (what didn't work had to be retooled countless times). Or even my company. We test a system in a small local setting offering ideally superior service a hell of a lot cheaper then normally. But then while they use it, we tweak it real time. It takes about 2 years before we have a product worth open usage. But we never gave away anything for free.

The RMAH, the other functions outside of raiding, etc are all attempts to try out new ideas in the wild. Lets face it, how many times can you do "oh hey, new purples to replace these purples which are marginally better." The game is more or less set in how you accomplish goals. So they trying new methods to grow that. RealID, the pets (surprisingly a big deal as given recent genre growth in monster pets), and the method to allow for fast entry and pickup upon joining the game. None of it is for WoW. I would argue it is for the next project.

You also have the company focus and vision's therein. But those are issues you cannot influence. If you tried in person, you would be laughed at, and then escorted out of the building. Mainly because you do not own squat in the company (HUGE difference between majority stock holders [30% and up] and minority) and have no right to have active influence upon the product.

In the end, I would say that the game is fine for what it is. And you should be rather happy they are experimenting now. It just means you will get a better game post-WoW.

[Deleted]

On July 9, 2008, Activision officially merged with Vivendi Games, culminating in the inclusion of the Blizzard brand name in the title of the resulting holding company, though Blizzard Entertainment remains a separate entity with independent management.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_Entertainment

"On August 1, 2005, Blizzard Entertainment announced the closure of Blizzard North. A key reason for the closure was Blizzard North's poor development of what was to be Diablo III which did not meet the expectations of Vivendi."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_North

[Stormspellz]

On July 9, 2008, Activision officially merged with Vivendi Games, culminating in the inclusion of the Blizzard brand name in the title of the resulting holding company, though Blizzard Entertainment remains a separate entity with independent management.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_Entertainment

independent management can still be told what to do or more in corporate term hit these profit marks.

[Girlyman]

"On August 1, 2005, Blizzard Entertainment announced the closure of Blizzard North. A key reason for the closure was Blizzard North's poor development of what was to be Diablo III which did not meet the expectations of Vivendi."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_North

Vivendi, not Activision.

[Deleted]

Vivendi, not Activision.

When a publisher funds your games, they are sure as hell going to make sure they see a return on their investment.

Blizzard can do what they want because they fund their own games, but D3 is different because we will never know what the original D3 would have been like, or why Vivendi was unhappy with it.

In my opinion, they wanted to make it more politically correct, which Blizzard later did.

[Girlyman]

When a publisher funds your games, they are sure as hell going to make sure they see a return on their investment.

Blizzard can do what they want because they fund their own games, but D3 is different because we will never know what the original D3 would have been like, or why Vivendi was unhappy with it.

In my opinion, they wanted to make it more politically correct, which Blizzard later did.

I agree.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/top...?page=106#2104 Like the RMAH thing was a choice. It wasnt a choice, they had to do it because Blizzard has been since the merge part of big company which has stocks and people who buy their stocks expect them to rise in value. They have to think every posible way to make money. Obviously that means that general player is on the losing side, but it's just stupid when people blame developers, when in fact it's the management's fault they merged with Activision and now every fucking thing they do is almost all about money. Blame the corporate people, not developers.

From my understanding Vivendi was(recently) trying to sell ActiBlizz but the stocks were to high, with no one interested in purchasing it. So they have to devalue it somehow. According to Pachter Vivendi could take loans thru ActiBlizz and not pay them, creating a debt, forcing the stocks down.

[Deleted]

Diablo 3's problems are a result of a lack of vision on the part of the developers, not because of Activision. They don't have the time to micromanage every single iteration in a game

Who said they micromanage anything? They dont fucking micromanage, they just say "you have to make as much profit as posible" and that's all they have to say.