Mmo-ney's Economy

Rare mob. Spoiler

2011-09-17T18:44:00.001-07:00

Hey All,

With the dicsussion lately about the Den of the Fallen (I got this on my first play through, and didn't think to post anything about it) I figured I would shine some light on a rare mob in the Cathedral.

Lloigor is a crazed Conjuror pouring through the libary in the Cathedral. When he appears, it is always at the begining of Lvl 4. He will be standing on the far side of the libary reading from a podium. He is "friendly" until you touch the podium, at which point he'll get rather upset and start conjuroring bats to throw at you.

This is a purple type boss, so he has a reasonable chance to drop some loot, and wouldn't you know it, he dropped a rare while I took pics for the article.

DIablo 3 Beta Screenshots

2011-09-15T16:23:00.000-07:00

I figured over the next few days I would post some screenshots. Today I'll just start with the two Blacksmith lvls which were not previously shown in the media coverage.

Blacksmith Lvl 3.

Blacksmith lvl 4

Diablo 3 Beta Info

2011-09-12T17:00:00.000-07:00

Here is a quick list of initial beta information you may not have seen yet.

I estimate D3s economy to be 200x that of wow, ie: 1g in wow = 200g in diablo
You can only play in the beta up to the skeleton king, this takes about 2 hours. However you can play it over and over (character level continues to go up, max 13)
Your crafters are shared between your characters, so once you level it up or teach it a new recipe, all chars have it. (I'm assuming at least for normal, etc)
In 2 full play throughs, I've only had 1 rare drop.
Training your artisan is currently fairly challenging, the tomes required are made up of 5 pages, took me 2 full playthroughs to get 1 tome
5 tomes are required for lvl 1 and 2 blacksmithing
For each tome that you train the BS with, you gain additional recipes.
I've already had 2 recipes drop in the beta. (3 but 1 duplicate)
The shared stash works well, and you buy additional space, similar to wow.
The wizard is very easy, nothing can get close to you.
Repairing does not seem to be the gold sink I thought it would be. Gamble crafting will certainly be the gold sink.
Deckard no longer identifies items for you, but you only need to identify the rare drops (yellow lettering)
Scrolls of Identify drop commonly.
Magic items (blue) drop very commonly.
You no longer have to click gold to pick it up, you can just run overtop of it, but you still have to click to pick up everything else.
You can find a scroll in game for a companion that assists in picking up gold for you, it lasts about 5 or so minutes, this is a must for ranged for time savings.
Random property crafting can include sockets, even on low levels, just crafted lvl 11 pants with a socket slot.
"Highly Saleable" and "Highly Salvagable" are also random properties.

Diablo 3 Beta Begins

2011-09-06T17:32:00.000-07:00

In case you hadn't heard, the Diablo 3 friends and family beta has begun to a very select few. They are working to stabilize the beta before inviting more individuals. As anything we would write here would be under speculation, I beleive it would be best to take a week off before continuing on the postings. At that point, the NDAs should be lifted and we can give you pre launch details, which could still be not accurate, but they would be "less not accurate".

See you in a week with some insider info.

August Highlights

2011-09-03T06:32:00.000-07:00

August highlighted the start of the blog as information streamed out about the Real Money Auction House and the incoming release of Diablo 3 beta.

These were the most popular posts of August:

1. Blizzard Site update.
This detailed the new website Blizzard had launch for Diablo 3 including extensive FAQ sections.

2. It Begins
The first blog post, a discussion around why this change will change the video game industry forever.

3. Blizzard becomes Amsterdam
A comical/serious look at the controversy surrounding the RMAH and its implications on Diablo 3 gameplay.

I hope you enjoyed them. Stick around for September as we continue to delve in.

Blacksmith Artisan

2011-09-03T06:25:00.000-07:00

The Blacksmith is the first of the Artisans you'll meet in your travels. According to the Beta, the NPC will ask for your assistance in a quest (spoilers omitted). Once completed he will join your Caravan and provide you the Salvage Cube.

Here is a run down of the Blacksmith Features and how they may affect you.
1. Salvage or "Nephalem" Cube
This cube will be used to break down items into materials used in crafting and Artisan training. It can also be used a secondary storage unit, similar to that of the Horadric Cube of D2.

How will it affect you?
Salvaging items will be critical as we begin to gain data on probability of rares in breaking down these items for their materials. These materials are used in crafting and training.

2. Crafting
The backbone of the NPC. While the NPC will have standard items he will craft and sell, you will also have the ability to train him in rare item crafting through dropped recipes.

How will it affect you?
If you can corner a market on a recipe, look for large benefits, focus heavily on PVP gear and very early, and late game heightened gear.

3. Reparing
The Blacksmith with repair your armor for you as it degrades, similar to that of D2.

How will it affect you?
Simply put, this is a gold sink. Other than weapons, the less you get hit in the armor the less of a gold sink this will be.

4. Socketing
The NPC will provide Socketing services for armor and weapons. The current speculation is that the items can be of any quality, and that training your artisan can provide additional socketing slots to armor.

How will it affect you?

If this is indeed the case, and socketing an item does not change its level requirement, putting multiple sockets in low level armor could be very lucrative. More on this when we get to Gems.

5. Training
This is how you move your Blacksmith through the 5 lvls of progression and requires materials and gold.

How will it affect you?
Another gold sink, but assume that most will try to level this as quickly as possible. Look for gold and training materials to be the early game high sellers.

As always, look for arbitrage opportunities in these areas.

Artisans, Long overdue

2011-08-31T18:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I spoke a little about selling crafting materials early game, so I thought it was probably time we talked about Artisans

In Diablo 3, Blizzard is implementing a sort of companion class of crafters, who will follow you to the neutral zones of each act. These will include a Blacksmith, a Jeweler, and a Mystic.

It has been confirmed that the Blacksmith will be met in Act I through a quest chain, however, the other story lines have yet to be released. While the Artisans make for a very interesting dynamic, in not having to choose crafting professions, etc, anticipate that this will be one of the major gold sinks of the economy.

Blizzard has described that these crafters can be upgraded and be taught rare recipes (remember this). The upgrading process involves giving the Artisan some base materials, and gold, in order to train. The Artisan apparently has 5 levels of progression from Apprentice to Master. As you progress it is assumed you gain access to greater gear. It is also assumed that rare recipe drops will require a certain Artisan level in order for them to be learned.

Crafting in the game will act as the gamble in this version of Diablo (as mentioned in a previous post) in that you will provide your crafter with base materials, rare materials, and gold, and s/he will generate an item with some fixed stats and some random stats. Those you don't want you could break down back into mats and continue.

This will offer an interesting dynamic, and I'm looking forward to reporting more on these Artisans as information becomes available. As the Blacksmith was part of the Beta and well reported on, he will be the topic of our next discussion.

Early Launch Dramatics

2011-08-30T17:17:00.000-07:00

So I'll pose a question to the audience; in the early game when you break down an item, will you keep the mats for yourself, or sell them?

The answer should simply be, sell them. Those who are familiar with Warcraft's gold blog communities will see that the most money can be gained when people are trying to rush to the endgame.

For example
Anytime a new expansion would release, we would be given advanced beta testing, and information, to assist in figuring out what items the new expansion would popularize. While I could give you all the secrets as to what would be popular, I'll drag it out over a couple more blogs, moi hahaha.... Anyway, back to the break down.

Due to the way the itemization system works, there will be certain types of weapons that will not make sense, Axes with mana regen on them, these are the items you'll be looking to breakdown. Use the common materials to upgrade your own artisan, but sell off the rare stuff as those will be the items people will be using to "craft gamble" and level up. What you shouldn't be breaking down? Well, just about everything else, but more specifically, do not break down Magic Find, you should always be able to find a buyer for this stuff.

Tomorrow I'll talk a bit more about Artisans.

Region Locks, and Making Bank

2011-08-29T19:08:00.000-07:00

As some of you may or may not know, Diablo III will be region locked. What this means is that each region will have its own auction house. It also means that different copies of the game will be sold.

What does this mean to you? Well, if you live in Russia, you will probably have your own region. Similar to those in Europe, China, Oceanic (Aus, NZ, Indo etc), North America and South America.

But what can we do to profit from this?

For those who are familiar with World of Warcraft, if you buy your game in North America, your game copy ships with the north American based battle.net servers. If you wanted to play on a European server, you had to find a European copy of the game. Now some might think, well, I'll just play on the NA servers and make my money there, but you would be missing a huge market.

Allow me to draw your attention to the Mean Disposable Household Income index. This essentially indicates the top nations for disposable income, and theoretically, those who will spend on goods.

The top ten list is as follows (equalized)

United States (NA)
Canada (NA)
Switzerland (EU)
United Kingdom (EU)
Norway (EU)
Austria (EU)
Germany (EU)
Denmark (EU)
Netherlands (EU)
Sweden (EU)

While not an exact science, my point is, if you're playing the game, and are accumulating a lot of $$, don't forget about the €€ servers and vice versa.

Bots

2011-08-26T20:57:00.000-07:00

Botting is strictly forbidden in Diablo 3, and we should all be hoping that Blizzard is as strict as possible on these cheaters. Bots will be the ruin of the economy, and I'm hoping Blizzard insta bans these hacks instead of the wave bans they do with world of warcraft.

That being said, we're bound to find them in the game so here is a list of themed Bots we're most likely to find.

1. Useless Bot.
Useless Bot will be the /afk /follow bot that tags along and does nothing but increase the difficulty of the Boss as the more people you have in your group, the more health the boss will have.

2. The Magic Find Bot.
Bot two will be completed decked out in MF gear, and you may get lucky enough that it semi attacks the monster. It will almost certainly be a caster, so that it does not need to get in close to do damage. This will be setup to assure that if blizzard implements a system where you have to be completing actions during a fight to get loot, they are covered.

3. AoE Bot.
AoE bot is usually pretty funny, it just does a low level AoE to get dmg down on mobs. If anyone has tried to take an existing bot and use it in Diablo, you're likely to get this one. I'd recommend running out of Mob range, so this one gets killed.

4. Broken Bot
Finally, Broken bot or Test bot, is the bot that is spinning in circles, and standing at the checkpoint. This likely someone beta testing their bot to see if it will work in game.

In all cases, please, help to remove these bots by reporting all to Blizzard.

Magic Find, Friend or Foe

2011-08-26T20:37:00.000-07:00

In Diablo 2, Magic Find (MF) was a big help to those hunting down gear. Diablo wiki here has a good overview of the system. In short, Magic Find was a gear stat just like Strength or Dmg, however, this stat gave you an additional chance to have rares drop.

What diablo then turned into was how much MF can you wear while still surviving.The good news, and the bad news, is that Magic find is back in Diablo 3.

The reason it is good, is for those who are looking to earn money, this will be the easiest way to do it. Adorn your MF gear and go loot hunting. Why is it bad, well, bots, and terribad players will equip this gear and afk on your runs.

Publish Post

Loot in Diablo 3 is going to work a little different than previous. Everyone gets their own loot drop, so while we no longer have to run to be the first at the loot, it also means you don't really have to be any good to get any, and this will turn into a huge problem.

So, how can we benefit. Well, by perpetuating these issues. "What?" you say "Why would I want to help the jerks" and the simple answer is, the jerks have money to spend. Anticipate MF gear to be a serious winner for profit from inception of the game, to its dying days. Hunt it down, and if you don't need it, sell these bad boys. They'll be hot hot hot.

Next blog will be about the bots we'll be likely to encounter.

Blizzard Site update

2011-08-24T16:17:00.000-07:00

Blizzard has uploaded a starter page for their Auction House, which I'm sure will have more information shortly, there's a lot of FAQ items which I'll discuss in future blogs. Here's another pic of their "smart search" feature, which is a good thing, or you would otherwise have to search through approximately 3 million items everytime you wanted something.

Character Selling, more info

2011-08-24T16:10:00.000-07:00

Speculation on fees and regions can wait until tomorrow. Thanks to those at IncGamers we have a screenshot of the character selling section of the auction house.

Here we can see more detail as to how these characters will be sorted and searched in the AH

Lifesteal, which many consider to be the next version of chain potion drink (made popular by Diablo 2), appears directly on the window, along with strength, which coincide with the optional equipment stats checked in the search window. If for nothing else I'm sure people will come here to seek pvp characters.

Look for opportunities here to view which type of classes and itemizations are being bid on. I'm sure something very very popular here will be characters with high Magic Find also known as MF.

I'll go over Magic Find and its implications in tomorrow's blog.

What's for Sale

2011-08-23T17:42:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,

Today I'm going to speak about what's for sale on the Real Money auction house (RMAH) in Diablo III. First let's start with a pic.

This is a screenshot of the RMAH which tells us, currently, what we may be able to sell for real money when Diablo 3 is released.

Let's go from top to bottom:

Equipment
Fairly straight forward, I'm speculating that the best sellers here are likely to be the following:

Items considered at high quality at both start game and end game ie: 0-10 and 50-60
Items which have a high break down value for crafting
Socketed items, especially early game ones
and Inferno items (more information is needed here.)

Characters
It appears Blizzard will allow the sale of characters, however I don't believe they will allow you to sell hardcore characters. So what might sell well?

Characters of all levels during holiday seasons "Mummy, Daddy, please buy me an epic Barbarian so I can crush people"
Character's for multiboxing (multiple games running on multiple or dual screen systems)
Character's with set stashes
Characters who have fully advanced their Crafters
You may even use this service to move your own characters to another account? Cheap account transfer?

Gems
This one will be fun, no need to speculate, there will be a lot of gems on the RMAH, and don't just assume they will only be the top end ones, people are likely to sell gems of every level.

Crafting and Dyes
A little trickier here, some of this will have to be consumable items used in crafting, and I'm fairly confident that you'll see things like

Vanity Items
Rare crafting material
Crafter leveling kits

Tomes and Pages
At this point, admittedly, I have no idea what these will be for, I'll follow up in a future blog. If you have any reference for it, please post something in the comment section.

Gold
Again, fairly straight forward. I'm very curious to see:

Will the economy actually accept the gold currency (works in WoW but not in D2)
Will everyone simply undercut one another over and over until it becomes almost worthless.

Gold should be considered a trade good, and the trade goods will be the only items in the game that will be subject to ongoing market flooding.

Well, that's it for now. Tomorrow I'll speculate on the RMAH fees and Regions.

Blizzard becomes Amsterdam

2011-08-22T19:02:00.000-07:00

Blizzard has recently decided to launch Diablo 3 with an in game Gold auction house and... wait for it... Real money auction house. This is a game changer, while this news is about 3 weeks old from the date that I'm writing this, already sites that have been in dormancy for years are back generating 10s of thousands of hits each day with people clamoring for content information.

I have to admit, having attended Blizzcon in 2010, I hadn't really sat in on any of the panels, or the game demo as I figured "heck, it's Diablo, I'll just pick it up, and click things to death". When this info released, I admit, I was fired up. Then I started to read some of the information and commentary surrounding the RMAH and was surprised to see a large community base upset with this decision, this is in fact what prompted me to start up this Blog.

My perspective is that Blizzard has decided to become Amsterdam. Here is an artist's rendition

If you're wondering what the real Amsterdam flag looks like, find it here

(and yes, I find it hilarious that it is a triple X)

To clarify, what Blizzard has done is essentially take a process, which is considered against the terms of use, realized it is happening anyway, and has decided to legitimize and tax it. This may seem like a very foreign concept to a lot of Americans as, historically, the country has had a policy of simply putting harsh enforcements in place to deter individuals. I give you Marijuana, Prohibition and Fornication laws, to name a few. So for a nation that is not overly familiar with the concept, here's a brief snapshot of how, in theory, it is supposed to work, under legalization and taxation, the government can:

A: Control quality

B: Improve product

C: Provide a safe environment to participate

D: Generate revenue

to name a few.

Some people believe that Blizzard is hiding behind this sort of mentality to justify what they call "Another way for Blizzard to push a dynamic payment model". To those individuals, I would like to point out the following. In World of Warcraft, Susan Express messaged me on a daily basis while I was online. This chick really got around, but what you typically noticed was that the prices of these gold farmers was relatively stable between competition, at what some would consider relatively high prices. The reason these prices were high was due to the issue of the infrastructure to run these farming groups, and the risk involved in the transactions. If you considered that the entire player base would have been able to buy and sell gold (like when IGXE was doing well.) then you would imagine the price would have dropped dramatically. IGXE was a sort of cartel that was able to keep prices up, but an open market economy will have prices which are much more fair. Wouldn't you rather be in a economy where the prices are fixed by the market, and the individuals who provide you a great gaming experience are provided additional funding to assist in the ongoing improvement of their products?

Other's have discussed the issue that "Someone should not be able to walk into the game and buy awesome gear and rule". Well, my friends, this already happens, and really, how does it affect your experience? Some people may argue that it will affect PVP but we the Hardcore should know that people who buy equipment are typically not as good.

All this being said, I'm sure you've gathered by now that I'm in favour of the new system. My primary point is that it allows player to player based trading. I have no problem with spending my Sunday afternoon playing the game to find an item I don't need and sell it to an individual who may have 3 kids and enjoys the game, but simply does not have a lot of free time to spend hunting down items.

Will I buy items? I don't think so. Will I sell items, well, I'll try. Will it be a success? Well, one never knows. Only time will tell.

Recently, one of my old haunts, IncGamers, posted a podcast about both sides of the argument, if you've got the 50ish minutes to listen to the discussion, it's very civil and feel both sides articulate their points well.

So, now that the intro and the politics are out of the way, you're probably wondering where to go from here.

For now, I'll be posting news and information for you to review and we'll speculate together. I hope to deliver a daily blog for the community, and if there's a topic out there you would like me to comment on, please post it in the comments section.

It Begins

2011-08-22T18:08:00.000-07:00

Recently Blizzard dropped a game changer on us, Real Money auction house, and since then the world of gaming has been in a stir. Productivity at work has gone down, speculation is high, and already, China is breeding another 40 million children so that they can be dexterous enough to farm loot when Diablo 3 releases in 4 months.

But let's go back. Over the past decade I've typically focused on 1 game at a time, but been very involved. Such games included; Diablo 2, Star Wars Galaxies and most recently World of Warcraft. Every time I've played these games I strive, not only to be in a high echelon of play but also, to generate the most wealth in game.

I should explain that wealth does not mean galactic credits/gold, it has simply meant that I had the means in game to acquire any tradeable item. Eventually I grew bored with each game as the content got stale or I simply had reached a level of wealth where there was no longer a point in playing the market. Simply, I got complacent.

This included recently leaving World of Warcraft, which was a tremendous game for many years but is starting to feel dated. Usually before leaving any game I would review whether or not I could "cash out" from the game. Over the years however the Terms of Use, EBay, Third Party sites, have all made it increasingly difficult for this to happen. Or at least, until now...