Exchange of virtual items for real money

quote Gouki

quote Spastic

One concern of mine is that it's going to decrease the longevity of the game. The reason Diablo II is still their most played legacy title (or 2nd to Starcraft maybe) the end game never ends. They made magic finding fun. Now, if you can just buy/sell any item it's going to make the game economy boring as hell. Why not set up an auction for item-item trades? Introducing real world currency, especially when you are going to have bot or organized farmers due to the financial incentive, just makes the whole thing pointless.

I'd just like to point out, that even though there wasn't a real money auction house in Diablo II, the majority of people still actually bought their equipment online. A recent poll regarding real money auction house for hardcore mode showed that more than half of the participants were in favor. This shows how much people are willing to pay with actual money instead of looting it themselves.

I believe that the foremost reason for this is that the true fans (the first part of the franchise came out in '96) of Diablo are now starting to reach a mature age, if they haven't already reached maturity. This would mean that a large chunk of the community is most likely already starting a career or is doing some sort of a degree. In other words, people are just plain busy. And everyone knows that farming for items in Diablo isn't always a fruitful endeavour. It can take hours upon hours before you find anything of any value, let alone something that you can use for yourself. So a large amount of these people are opting to buy their way through Diablo instead of farming. It's certainly more cost effective for those with a career.

You can either a) buy a good item for a couple of bucks or b)spend a whole day farming without anything to show for it. Maybe you will find an item you can use, but you will have spent atleast half a day to find it. This time could have instead been spent working, where you would have earned a full's day pay! Whereas when you buy an item, it only takes a brief moment and you can spend the rest of your free time doing whatever you like (in the realm of Diablo ofcourse ). Point being is that for those with a career or steady job, buying an item is actually less expensive then farming one. Time is money.