Diablo 3 Beta First Impressions and a brief tirade on statistics

[Bolty]

Welcome to the cookie-cutter world of Diablo, now with more cookies! Diablo III will almost entirely be driven by items. This fits with their model for the RMAH. Don't you get it?

Gotta agree with what Roland's saying here; most of the recent changes to the game all seem to be driven towards getting their users into the RMAH. It's easy to be overly cynical about the way the game's structured:

1) No mods allowed, or else users could develop their own item-trading mods,
2) No public chat allowed, or else users could negotiate item trades,
3) Stash size reduced, making it harder to mule gear - so why not just sell it on the AH?
4) Skills totally commoditized, so that items are the pure focus of character development - and where can you go to find the best items?

Like Roland, it's turning me off. When items form the *entire* basis of your character's power, and the game's primary monetary profit force is the RMAH, Blizzard has a crazy high incentive to generate interest in its use - and players have a crazy high incentive to use it. You will never be able to be as powerful as a character who uses the AH to gear up, because the odds of getting the supreme gear in every slot are just nil (we assume). Think of the rarity of some runes in Diablo II. Blizzard can introduce mega-rare items at any time that will essentially force you to shop for to get, because they're so rare that you'll never see one. But someone will, and they'll post it up on the RMAH for purchase. Then Blizzard gets its cut.

The whole scheme is so damn ingenious, though. I wish I thought of it. They're like a casino that gets to play the odds however they like, since they make the odds - but since they never cash in directly from the casino games, they can stay afloat of gambling laws. Blizzard's not selling items at all, but they're creating the system that creates the items that they get to take a cut of a sale from. It's like printing money. They are creating virtual items that turn into real money. Wow.