Diablo 3 Beta "Soon"Follow

After one post you should probably go outside and not come back.

*Drunken post. ignore. ;)

Edited, Aug 1st 2011 7:41am by Shojindo

Also this just happened.

This.

A thousand times this.

I mean, seriously, what's up with this? No mods? And in-game RMT?

It's like this is everything we feared from the Activision merger. But this time it's actually happening.

Edited, Aug 1st 2011 9:22am by IDrownFish

So now we even have to decide which Auction House to use?

Also also, http://kotaku.com/5825582/diablo-iii

And now I really wanna replay Diablo II like I used to do...

You have no idea how close to reality this statement could potentially become.


Years ago there was an article from some accountant/tax attorney/tax auditor/someone knowledgeable on US tax law (I'm pretty sure the article was from '06ish, so I don't remember specifics).

The article was about taxation of virtual property and currency and why the industry hasn't attempted to go after RMT. Basically, what it all boiled down to was how in-game items and currency were classified. In order to prosecute, they would have to be reclassified and a real world monetary value would have to be given to them in order to prosecute. The problem with doing this is that the reclassification and the addition of a set monetary value would open everything up to taxation by the IRS, regardless if you sold it for real world money or not. Every time you got a piece of new gear you could potentially have to pay taxes on it.

Second life has managed to stay just below the IRS's radar for years, but the RMT and transfer of real world items for virtual currency has been brought up a few times. Second Life also taxes transactions when currency goes from one form to the other.

EVE and PLEX (The gamecards idig was talking about) have managed to stay off the radar for the most part, but the big scandal a few years ago did bring attention to the way their economy is setup and how it has real world influence.

Second Life and EVE aren't based in the US which could have something to do with the IRS keeping their hands out of US based players pockets. Unfortunately, Blizzard is in the US.

Here's an article I found, but not the one I was talking about.
http://yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal-pocket-part/legislation/why-the-irs-has-not-taxed-income-from-virtual-world-transactions-.-.-.-yet/

My issue at this point is that WoW and the associated RMT is specifically referenced in several of the more recent articles, a reference that could easily shift to Diablo 3 once this gets out. A lot of it is going to depend on how Blizzard reports these transactions. If this takes off and Blizzard turns this into a cash cow, the IRS is going to want their cut, and there's a good chance that the reclassification required to do that could extend to virtual items and currency as a whole, and not those just being sold for real world goods and services.

I doubt that this would actually make them money, or at least much. I just don't like the idea of it in the game. I shouldn't EVER have to spend money to be competitive in the game. If someone can completely gear themselves in the best stuff using real world cash, then it isn't realistic to expect me to be able to compete with them using only in-game cash and my own farming.

If they put limits on the marketplace in terms of what you can sell (like limiting gems at 75% upgraded, etc.) then it might not be something I really care about. But you shouldn't be able to get a six-socket Blade of Insta-Death on it. Anything that could potentially be used right away in competitive play should be limited to trading and farming.

Though even that wouldn't actually work, because it just gives scammers an avenue. Offer to sell an <insert rare, awesome item> for $50, have them buy some stupid item on the AH for it, and then just trade it normally.

PvP was alive and well in DII when I played. I'd practically call it flourishing, actually.
There were a ton of people who raised characters for dueling purposes.

No real competitive PvE play, but there was definitely PvP readily available.

If you don't remember, you could flag yourself as aggressive towards players in your world (and form alliances as well). That allowed you to attack (and be attacked by) them. Plenty of people created worlds designed for 1v1, 2v2, etc. duels. And the rules varied a lot as well. Since you dropped stuff when you died, losing could mean a significant loss. That was the only real issue in the game, since there was no way to set (and more importantly enforce) those rules.

Even the nightmare dueling scene was larger than you'd imagine (considering 1 loss was a permanently dead character). That's where the ability to automatically get all the best items would be particularly felt.