Real money Auction House in World of Warcraft

[Jaese]

Pretty sure the unannounced thing was the Thunderforged itemization they announced a day later.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Pretty sure the unannounced thing was the Thunderforged itemization they announced a day later.

Ghostcrawler said the next day it's not. In fact, they don't even know if Thunderforged will carry over to the tier after ToT.

[Pann]

I highly doubt it tbh. It would be just too much to have to buy the game + expansions and pay the sub fee, then to be presented with a RMAH. Even if they did announce it, they would probably be bombarded with so much hate that they may even decide against it but I am hopeful that they know it would be a bad idea and just make gold sellers/hackers even more rich.

In fairness many thought that a game that charged for the game and expansions as well as a monthly fee would never be able to charge for services such as character transfers and pets and mounts. If there is one thing that Blizzard is absolutely exceptional at it is making money from their customers I am sure that for all the complaints there would be be if a RMAH was introduced there would many who would defend such a decision.

That said I do not think we are ever likely to see a RMAH in WOW as there is not much money to made, even discounting the entire redesign of the loot and AH systems that would be required, additional licensing would be required and WOW would lose its teen rating. There is the potential headache of loot disputes and possibly even legal hassles when someone steals from their guild bank or ninja loots an expensive item.

[Ogait]

If by any chance Blizzard wants to introduce a new feature that has a huge impact on WoW, Real Money AH is what they're looking for.

But... The huge impact will be negative, I'm afraid off.

The day they introduce this in game, is the day I press 'Cancel Subscription' on my account.

[Lovecrafts]

RMAH doesn't seem much different than a micro-transaction system. Except in this case, the supply is being created by the players, players have a chance to earn some $$$ and blizzard gets a cut as well....
...
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Oh yeah, it's OPTIONAL to participate in.

Remind me what the problem is again? If you don't like it...you don't have to participate. I've never used RMAH in D3 and have had 0 problems getting geared up or enjoying the game. Honest to god, it's like you people will take any excuse to have a knee-jerk reaction.

[Ogait]

It all starts when I've to spend Real Life Money to stay competitive if I want to. It is not fair.

Also, I kinda feel that RMAH goes against the Rules of WoW, since you can't sell in game items for Real Money (Mounts, etc.)...

[Lovecrafts]

It all starts when I've to spend Real Life Money to stay competitive if I want to. It is not fair.

Also, I kinda feel that RMAH goes against the Rules of WoW, since you can't sell in game items for Real Money (Mounts, etc.)...

Guess what, you already do. It's called your subscription.

What pray-tell do you NEED from the AH to stay competitive? Gems? Make a JC. Enchantments? Make an enchanter, etc etc. Flasks? Make an alchemist.....
Before you cry "BUT THATS TOO MUCH WERK!!", I have a max level JC, Chanter, Alchemist, Tailor, and Blacksmith, and honest to god, it took very little effort.

[Tenjen]

D3 wasnt an MMORPG, you were always in your own little world and could invite or be invited to others. D3 and WoW are completely different beasts. You might as well be comparing mass effect 3 multiplayer with its purchasable DLC weapons and race/class packs to WoW

and no its not optional, cause it affects you whether you use it or not. It will ruin the ingame economy and regular auctions.

and yes it is different from microtransactions cause the current money spending in wow out not ingame, not widespread and limited in scope to non-progress items. RMAH would be ingame, widespread and will give people in an MMORPG an advantage over those who dont. especially in a game that didnt initially have it. Not to mention the social changes that would occur.

[Ogait]

Guess what, you already do. It's called your subscription.

What pray-tell do you NEED from the AH to stay competitive? Gems? Make a JC. Enchantments? Make an enchanter, etc etc. Flasks? Make an alchemist.....
Before you cry "BUT THATS TOO MUCH WERK!!", I have a max level JC, Chanter, Alchemist, Tailor, and Blacksmith, and honest to god, it took very little effort.

At least take a moment to check my armory before saying things like that. I am not crying and I never said it takes too much work.
But when you want to stay competitive, you've to buy everything you can from the beginning so you've that little advantage to your competitors, and RMAH will destroy this, because if your competitors are using it, you'll be forced to use it if you want to stay in the race. Same shit happened with DS debuff. If you wanted to be Realm First, you had to use the debuff, even if you didn't want to use it. Maybe I can remind you what some big guilds did back in the first weeks of Pandaria at the BMAH, it's the same thing, just with real life money.

[Asmekiel]

Seems some people don't know what the difference between the GAH and RMAH is. You can't sell heroic items on the RMAH, they're still soulbound. The only difference is that you pay real money instead of gold, all other restrictions still apply.

[Deleted]

Let's be honest, many will say it's a crap idea and they'll quit and whatnot. Kind of like for MoP, pandaren, dumb, we'll quit etc. So will they? Well a few will, maybe even a few hundread thousands even. But the rest will remain and some will use the RMAH even enough so Blizzard won't be at loss over those that actually left.

This happened for that pet too, remember? you could buy it for money and sell it for gold. That was going over a line... yet many people defended Blizzard, did they not? Same will happen here, many will complain, some will quit but most will not. And a few will even defend Blizzard like their life depends on it.
Why? Because they're milking cows and they like to be so. Well, enjoy your status as a milking cow then. If a RMAH actually goes live sometimes, you'll love it even more since you can actually throw money at Blizzard for them offering you nothing in return!

[Lovecrafts]

At least take a moment to check my armory before saying things like that. I am not crying and I never said it takes too much work.
But when you want to stay competitive, you've to buy everything you can from the beginning so you've that little advantage to your competitors, and RMAH will destroy this, because if your competitors are using it, you'll be forced to use it if you want to stay in the race. Same shit happened with DS debuff. If you wanted to be Realm First, you had to use the debuff, even if you didn't want to use it. Maybe I can remind you what some big guilds did back in the first weeks of Pandaria at the BMAH, it's the same thing, just with real life money.

I don't care about your armory. I don't care about your virtual achievements. I see pointless whining and am pointing it out. There nothing on the AH that you NEED to be competitive that you can't already craft yourself if you put the effort forward. Saying "IT'S NOT FAIR!!!" makes you sound like an upset child stamping its feet over being denied candy or something.

[Deleted]

Terrible idea.

All it does is ruin the economy.

You can't just hamfistedly shoehorn a RMAH into WoW, it needs to have been built around that being included.

[Pann]

Guess what, you already do. It's called your subscription.

What pray-tell do you NEED from the AH to stay competitive? Gems? Make a JC. Enchantments? Make an enchanter, etc etc. Flasks? Make an alchemist.....
Before you cry "BUT THATS TOO MUCH WERK!!", I have a max level JC, Chanter, Alchemist, Tailor, and Blacksmith, and honest to god, it took very little effort.

Just say for a minute they did introduce a RMAH if it remained as easy to circumvent its use there would be no money in for Blizzard therefore it is likely that they would change the system to drive people to use it.

[Lovecrafts]

Just say for a minute they did introduce a RMAH if it remained as easy to circumvent its use there would be no money in for Blizzard therefore it is likely that they would change the system to drive people to use it.

That's an awfully big and unfounded assumption. They didn't do that in D3, and people used it anyway. Again, knee-jerk upsets scared of any changes that may occur in the game.

[Jaese]

Ghostcrawler said the next day it's not. In fact, they don't even know if Thunderforged will carry over to the tier after ToT.

Ah. Interesting.

[Awe]

IMO it doesnt even work good in D3 and is the biggest reason why I dont play it anymore. If not RMAH, I probably would. After all those fixes in recent months it is not such a bad game as some people claim it to be. But RMAH? Why would I farm for weeks for a decent drop if I can just take 5 euro and buy a better item legally on AH? No hassle, simple and easy. I dont do money transactions in games like WoW becouse it is illegal, feels dirty and quite often is also rather expensive. But D3? So many people play with RMAH that it actually makes decent items quite affordable and it is all sanctioned by Blizzard. So again, why should grind my ass off (which Diablo games are about) if I can just buy decent gear cheaply under Blizzard's authority?

[Uko]

A RMAH in wow would be the straw that broke the camels back. I would quit before this turd of a feature hit live and I would wager that I wouldn't be alone in an exodus after such a feature was announced.

[yurano]

But they will never do it in WOW because wow is a competitive game, both PVE and PVP. The reason they added it in for D3 wasn´t some moneygrab for them, it was simply to fix a HUGE issue with D2. In D2, there was also a RMAH, but it was located on a bunch of seedy and sometimes evil 3rd party websites. Thousands, if not tens of thousands of players used those sites, and many were conned because of it. If you played D2 back in the first few years, you know exactly why Blizzard almost had to add RMAH as an official part of D3.

Even then, a lot of players who enjoyed D2 a lot didn't enjoy D3.

Blizzard's reliance on RMAH to turn a profit is what made D3 unenjoyable. Its quite apparent that Blizzard developed the entire game to revolve around the auction house. You MUST use the AH to progress at all. AH is also instrumental in being a successful player. Moreover, the game is tuned to be difficult enough where you're heavily encouraged/incentive to 'pay to win'. Its easy to see why the RMAH is blamed for destroying D3.

In wow, however, this is not the case, and almost never is there an item mandatory for end game progression on the current AH.

In fact, it really would have no less of an impact than the current old AH has. Now, adding in heroic or normal raiding items to AH? Sure that's a different story. But adding real money to the current AH system would be no worse than the current one we have. It would also be pretty pointless, which is probably why blizzard would never do it unless WoW one day went free to play.

You're assuming a 'WoW' RMAH would just be an alternative to the current 'gold AH' or even a system where RMAH is only used to trade gold for cash.

Because Blizzard invested so heavily in the RMAH, they've adapted the game to milk as much as possible from RMAH commission. You can bet that if WoW RMAH was released, it would most likely be a BMAH implementation, selling raid/arena level gear. Who would bother spending real money to buy flasks and potions? No one. This is the reason why a 'gold AH' replacement RMAH would not be worth the investment.

You can see how RMAH costs by looking at how D3 AH has so many redundant systems to prevent errors/cheating that the entire AH itself is incredibly slow and inefficient. Sometimes items I bid on disappear due to heavy AH lag and the like only to reappear some 2 days later, evidence of D3's garbage collection/error checking system.

[Pann]

That's an awfully big and unfounded assumption. They didn't do that in D3, and people used it anyway. Again, knee-jerk upsets scared of any changes that may occur in the game.

D3 was designed from the ground up to incorporate a RMAH and does not have soulbound items. Why do you think my assumption is unfounded? If people can avoid spending money by leveling their professions why would they use the RMAH? Without people using it and therefore it not generating money for Blizzard what would be their motivation for introducing such a system.