The thing I want to discuss is why investing in the Realm Money Auction House can be a good thing. The real aim is for people who have spare money, lack time to farm and/or are frustrated by some wall they cannot move across.

Diablo 3 is all about gear. To do blaze through the game without significant frustration, you pretty much are going to be using the Auction House at some point. This includes any act at any difficulty level. This pretty much is a given and so you’ll have to accept that you will depend on the Auction House no matter what (unless you’re someone like Athene who has gear handed to him).

However, if you lack a great deal of gold, you will be relegated to having poor gear most of the time. So how can you move past that barrier? Easy: The Real Money Auction House.

I hate to admit that Blizzard’s master plan is true, but unfortunately the way the game is designed, you pretty much will end up using it as a casual player at some point. But this article is not going to be a put down on the unethical design of the game. Instead, I want to convince people who are hesitant about using the Realm Money Auction House that it’s not such a bad thing in general.

The first argument most people will say before plunking a cent down into the Real Money Auction House is, “Well, I don’t want to spend money for virtual items!” The fact that you bought a game for around $60 that is hosted on a server means you’ve already lost the first argument. Second, if you’ve only beaten normal mode but gave up once you hit Nightmare, you have not really spent that $60 all that well in the first place. If you really want to get the most of this game, you really have to hit 60, play Inferno mode to see the full range of content.

Also, what about trying other classes? Sure, the game has an “ending” where you kill Diablo. But that’s not the “end game”. The “end game” is about pushing what you can do, maximizing your character, your progress and possibly trying other classes and builds and exploring the mechanics of the game a little more in depth.

However, you’ll more than likely hit a wall still. I would even argue that you might run into problems on Inferno mode Monster Power 0 if you’re not that great of a player nor have enough gold saved up for competitive items. The thing is that if you hit this wall, but lack time or patience to farm more gold, you’ll need a quicker, more convenient way to get those items to progress.

Next, you can find fairly affordable items in the Real Money Auction House. Yes, there are ridiculously overpriced items that can sell up to $250 (from what I’ve seen). However, unless you’re an exceptionally wealthy executive that plays once every few weeks, you really are not the target for that type of item. You can find items that cost anywhere between $2-10, which I find reasonable, especially when you get into Inferno difficulty.

Now, here’s where the investment “strategy” comes into literal play. I believe that you can plunk down between $30-70 and have a really well geared character once you hit 60. This character can topple Monster Power 0 Inferno without any trouble. It’ll feel like normal mode again, minus some kiting at times. Now, that you can blaze through Inferno mode, you can start racking up the gold and items. You can even farm lower level difficulties with high monster power and sell lower items for a premium on the Auction House.

So the basic idea is that you invest into your first character another $30-60 on top of the basic game so that the game plays smoother in the long run. You might say, “Well, $90-120 for a game is quite a lot!” That depends again on what you want to get out of it. I don’t see Diablo 3 as a game you play and finish in a single weekend. There’s plenty of stuff to do to really extend it. But I’ve already made that point and want to go more into how the $30-60 extra works out.

So let’s say you put $60 into your character. Now, you have top gear, something that can make you a bit more competitive. If you want to try other classes, what you do is invest in some of the leveling items. The two main leveling items you want to pick up are the Horadric Hamburger and Spectrum. Go for Spectrum at the very least as it’ll carry you up until Hell mode. Definitely, for Barbarians and Monks, having both the Spectrum and Horadric Hamburger will make them very overpowered until Hell mode. These items will cost quite a bit of gold, but are well worth the money since you can continuously pass these items between characters once they hit level 30.

The next item that I’ve found as a good investment is Echoing Fury. I purchased one with a level reduction fact of 13. So for my guys, they can begin using it at level 47. It does quite a bit of damage. Combine that with other level reduction equipment and you’ll find Hell mode a breeze.

What makes this all an “investment strategy?” Time. The idea here is to put more into one character, then have that character feed the rest of your characters. In other words, you’ll be able to avoid having to farm as much and in a frustrating manner by having that one outstanding character do most of the grunt work initially. But it won’t be as bad as grinding every little bit themselves by giving him/her an initial boost. As you’ll see, the time requirement for farming and earning gold/items will be drastically reduced and you’ll be able to play more of the higher end of the game sooner than if you avoided the Real Money Auction House altogether.

If you’re still one of these types that think, “Well, I want to play the game honestly and honorably!” then you really are smoking crack. If you want to minimize that though and not have as much of a guilt trip, just create five more characters after your initial character that you’ve invested into and play them from the start. You’ll more than likely still require the normal Auction House, but by then you should have enough money that you’ve “earned” on your own that it won’t matter anymore. At any rate, you’ll be able to move faster than you would’ve before.

The post Diablo 3: Investing in the Real Money Auction House appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

The first thing to note is that the game has progressively become easier. This has been a great thing as many players that had quit at one time are returning since the content has been nerfed. Before this part though, the game had been notoriously difficult, even impossible. In a few interviews, some of the leads admitted that even their own staff could not beat the game on Inferno mode.

If the game is made too frustrating, it’s quite obvious to anyone that the player base will gradually die down. Blizzard has a history of doing this too as we see the constant swapping of hard-to-easy-back-to-hard content with World of Warcraft. You would think that by now Blizzard would realize that they need to figure out the sweet spot of challenging players and making the game accessible for casuals.

So here’s where everything started to click for me. First, I think that Inferno mode, right now in patch 1.0.5 is the real “normal” mode, unless you add higher Monster Power levels. Normal, Nightmare and Hell modes are simply training grounds preparing you for Inferno difficulty. Just like how levels 60, 70, 80, 85 and 90 were the levels where the “real game” started for World of Warcraft (e.g. end game content of raiding, heroics and PVP), 60 is where the real game begins for Diablo 3.

You have access to all items (that are not class specific for the most part), the monsters full abilities come into play, you get Nephlam Valor points and have access to all of your class abilities. At this point, you can experiment with different class builds and gearing. Prior to this, you didn’t need to optimize as much. Like World of Warcraft, you can also see something like Bind-on-Account equipment with items such as the Horadric Hamburger or reduced level items. To me, these are to help players who have already leveled up and managed to collect enough money to speed run their alts to 60.

Initially, everyone had no problems with the first three difficulties. When they hit Inferno, unless you were a demon hunter or a wizard (i.e. ranged class) or played with a group, people would encounter a lot of issues with survival. I think Blizzard did this intentionally and coincided many of the later patches as well as the Real Money Auction House release.

So my theory is that the intention behind this was to award the hardcore players who could speed through content and have them build enough gear and gold in preparation for the Real Money Auction House. Once the RMAH was released, struggling players who had money and still wanted to play would end up forking over money to give it a second try. Note that the Real Money Auction House also made its debut during patch 1.0.3 on June 12 2012, where a significant reduction in difficulty had been done for monsters in Acts 2-4 on Inferno. Doing things in manner would award hardcore layers by allowing them to be the first to seed the Real Money Auction House.

Another theory I have is that when Diablo 3 was released, it actually was a Beta release, not a full release. Considering how much “improvements” have been released since then, my theory is that Blizzard used the pre-1.0.3 game as the real beta test to see how they could tune the game better, knowing full well that the game probably was impossible for all but the best players. However, I think if Blizzard had delayed the game any longer or admitted that what people were seeing was still Beta, they would lose a great deal of face (I still think they’ve been losing a lot of face, but that’s more because of the pressure stemming from Activision).

I believe most of the features we’re seeing coming out as patches were already built into the game such as Monster Power and Paragon Levels. Something like Paragon levels seems like a feature that should’ve been in the game from the start. But why weren’t these features introduced early on?

Again, I think that half of it was that Blizzard didn’t know just how hard it would be for casuals nor the repercussions of the difficulty level they set early on. Second, I think Blizzard tends to cater towards their hardcore fanbase far too much. It’s the same issue that pervades World of Warcraft and it stems from their limited insight into what their real audience is.

Most of their insight, outside of statistics gathered from the game, I think are from louder parts of the internet (e.g. Youtube), their dedicated following and their own community forums. Unfortunately, I think that a great deal of their player base ends up getting lost because they simply do not care enough about the game to really do much protesting. If the game becomes too difficult or boring, they’ll simply quit. At that point, the only feedback loop to Blizzard is the dying player base.

One other thing with regards to Paragon levels and Monster Power, I think that if they introduced those features early on, they wouldn’t have been able to receive the feedback on the difficulty to make adjustments accordingly. The problem in introducing Monster Power levels from the start is that they needed to figure out the sweet spot for Inferno mode. In my opinion, that later became the gradient that would define Monster Powers. Paragon levels would’ve exacerbated the time necessary to put the final tuning into place since hitting Paragon level 100 would throw the scale of Monster Power and Inferno difficulty into an extended two months of tuning.

And of course, the big thing in all of this was to make the Real Money Auction House succeed. That’s where Blizzard’s biggest bet in the game was, not initial sales but returning customers. I think by giving the impression that Inferno was impossible without the right gear early on, Blizzard had secretly hoped that the Real Money Auction House would catch on, even with the nerfs. That way people could feel overpowered just by contributing a few dollars, even if you could get away with playing the game using a budget character.

The one thing I think Blizzard might’ve overlooked or not taken enough into consideration was the proliferation of botting. According to various players, botting is currently hurting the Diablo 3 economy. While the increase in Legendaries has made the game more accessible for people, those that figured on making a partial living now face heavy competition from botters. Although Blizzard’s policy is to be against botting, they have been quite lackadaisical in handling this issue (besides each account is $60 and more than likely the botters are those that are Blizzard’s real source of income on the Real Money Auction House).

Nonetheless, I don’t think these things are coincidental. I’m damn certain they were planned for this purpose. Also, what about PVP? That’s been a very controversial subject and no one knows when or even if it’ll happen.

From my experience with World of Warcraft, I feel that PVP ends up causing more issues than it solves. Certainly, there’s a lot of people who are excited about the prospect of battling each other in Diablo 3. However, there’s a lot of questions that need to be asked. Will PVP have its own set of gear the way World of Warcraft does and their own stats? Will the top PVPers be those with large bank accounts who use the Real Money Auction House to climb their way to the top? Will PVP mechanics be considered separate from PVE the way specs had been handled in World of Warcraft?

The only thing we know thus far from Blizzard officially is that they are working on it. More than likely, they’re battling these very issues right now. They have stated that they do not want to make PVP in Diablo 3 an esport style affair. Unfortunately, I think no matter what Blizzard does, the game somehow will end up being an esport where people are extremely competitive. The only way Blizzard can get out of this situation is basically turning PVP into the equivalent of the implementation of Pet Battles in World of Warcraft.

I think that for PVP to be successful in Diablo 3, Blizzard must fully examine the path of hell they created for themselves in World of Warcraft. First, I think gear should have no place in PVP. People want to test raw skill and introducing anything beyond vanity gear into PVP will more than likely fuck up the rest of the game.

Second, Blizzard needs to divorce the idea of integrating the Real Money Auction House into PVP. Once non-vanity gear is introduced into the game, then everything will become a race to obtain it. But I think gear has caused so many problems in World of Warcraft when dividing PVE and PVP that Blizzard needs to just dismiss it. In World of Warcraft, there might be some limited justification for having gear in that it is a resource based world where two factions are battling.

However, from a role playing point of view, there’s nothing in Diablo 3 justifies using gear in a PVP setting. It’ll be nice for some players as a reward, but why not just give them a pretty color? With World of Warcraft, there have been so many issues with gear and max level toons. For instance, back in Wrath of the Lich King, your level 79 would not stand any chance against a PVP geared level 80. In fact, you could have several level 79s or 80s as well. If they had no PVP gear, that one PVP geared player would own them.

I think for PVP to be successful, they need to keep it simple and within the boundaries of existing character abilities. Even that might be far too complicated with the numerous combinations and stats that can turn the tide of one class and one type of game play. Look at the countless nerfs and QQers on forums in World of Warcraft. If you buff one ability, someone else is going to suffer. Then it affects PVE.

From my own point of view, keeping PVP out of the game completely would be ideal. Hopefully, if they do include PVP, it’ll be limited to battle grounds and arenas. I certainly do not want to see world based PVP.

At any rate, these are just some of my recent thoughts on Diablo 3. I’m curious outside of PVP what other additions to the game are in store before an expansion.

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