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Diablo 3: Auction House 'Really Hurt the Game' Says Wilson
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Shacknews is reporting that former Diablo 3 game director Jay Wilson has admitted that both the real money and gold auction houses ultimately hurt the game and weren't the best solution for what the team was trying to do. Wilson made the comments during a Diablo 3 post mortem talk during GDC.
He acknowledged that shutting down the auction houses was not as simple as it sounded, saying they did not know how many people actually enjoyed using them, and the company did not want to shut down a feature where players would be unhappy if it went away. He said Blizzard is working on a solution, but didn't elaborate.
Read the full article at the link above.
What about you? Have you used one or the other of the auction houses? Let us know!
Comments
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i realy didnt mind an AH that much......but bliizard should know that some gamers abuse ingame economics to get "rich" ingame.
the reason i uninstalled is because as a casual player i would have to use the RMAH to get realy good items because the droprates where so incredibly low that it would drop a week b4 the next expansion would come and i had to do the grinding all over again......in other words, i could never become any good without the use of the real money AH.
POE FTW
not even looking back to D3......they messed up.
ps: it seems i am not as forgiving then i used to be towards Blizzard.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
Instead of focusing on pointing out that Jay Wilson is being obvious, people should be looking VERY CLOSELY at the fact that he's saying this whilst he's still a Blizzard employee. That's what's interesting about this. Certainly a marked change in culture at Blizzard over the last year.
Blizzard has - historically - been one of the most arrogant, walled-off game companies out there. And for a time, that arrogance was well placed; they've given us arguably four of the best games ever made in World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Warcraft 3, and Diablo 2.
As the company grew it was always going to be the case that it would start making mistakes, but Blizzard seemed unwilling to admit or consider that the mistakes were theirs. I've always got this idea that, when something goes wrong and things don't go quite as the company expects, they genuinely believe that it's consumers that are at fault.
The recent spate of public comments about mistakes the company has made, and how best they may attempt to fix those mistakes, is refreshing. It's genuinely good to see a large company taking responsibility for the mistakes they have made. We are emerging into a highly competitive market. The 90s ethos - that consumers would do what they are told - is fast dying, and the market leaders of the future will be those companies that actually offer the most value to those with the purchasing power.
If this shift in ethos is genuine, it may well mean that Blizzard remains as a market leader for a long while to come. It certainly inspires me to reinvest some of the faith that I have lost in them over the last few years.
To be fair, a part of the reason for the RMAH was so people didn't end up buying items from non-legit places and end up with hacked accounts, stolen credit card information, etc. Sure, that would be the players fault, but Blizzard would also have to deal with tons of support topics resulting from that.
So, from what I'm guessing, they saw one of two options:
1) Let players purchase items from third-party sources, and deal with hacked accounts, account recoveries, etc etc etc.
or
2) Implemement an in-game auction house, so they could make some money, while at the same time proctecting those who would purchase items with real money anyways.
http://chroniclesofthenerds.com/nerdfight/
Y U NO FLIP TABLE?!?!?!
Believing the things these people say.... ts ts ts
RMAH is an experiment for a new income mechanism in games, like micro-transactions were, due to the cut BLIZ gets for the transactions, while the player feels that they are not actually paying the company but a brother gamer. I believe its very nicely thought, within the concept of "games as services" that we are getting accustomed to.
I really hope it does not catch-on, but we will see.
Thought Wilson has left Diablo ?
He has, but he was also the lead designer and has overseen it for the majority of its lifecyle. Those are exactly they people you want covering the "post mortem".
http://chroniclesofthenerds.com/nerdfight/
Y U NO FLIP TABLE?!?!?!
The RMAH was just a stupid idea.
#1. There are so many more people that hate it than like it.
#2. Those who do like can get along just fine without it. It's not a game-breaker for them.
I've heard of countless people quitting because of the AH. I've never heard of a player quitting any game because they removed some form of Auction House.
There ya go...defend Blizzard as "virtous"..."They arent trying to get more of my cash, they are protecting me from hackers".....LOL.....rose colored glasses much?
altough i agrre with you i have a slightly different angle when it comes to making it more "easy".
personaly i like a challenge and bosses can be hard as f*ck for all i care but in D3 i had the feeling i realy outleveled the drops i was gettin to progress to the next difficulty.......altough nightmare was very playable for me and my gear wasnt realy good but ok enough to continue. Once i got in hell difficulty i just got steamrolled by random mobs.....SO i bite the bullet and keep going untill late act 2 (by running with other people just to gear up a bit) and still got owned because the drops i got just didnt do enough regen or damage to actually to continue to the next acts.
Imho the game should be a bit less gear dependant but the uber stuff can still be rare as f*ck....but when it actually hinders me from my progress and i have to make a choice between buying stuff for real money to be able to advance or quit.......then i quit....games are supose to fun for me...once they stop being fun i just move to the next one.
so i did
You quoted (poorly) the word virtuous. That would imply that I said that, which I did not. I have no rose colored glasses sir, nor do I own Diablo 3. I've only just started playing it a few days ago with the level 1-13 trial.
I also never said they weren't trying to make money. Allow me to quote myself, "...so they could make some money, while at the same time proctecting those who would purchase items with real money anyways.".
Again, no rose colored glasses here sir. I'm just simply saying things aren't as black and white as you seem to think they are.
They could use trade post instead of auction house.
One guy proposes an item for trade....then many who are interested for the item propose items and then he got to choose one or shut the trading item down.
But their brains are too small and of course their are not open minded.
They are staying true to what people enjoyed about D2. Not everyone gives a crap about deciding what color hair my demon hunter has or how tall my sorcerer is. It's not something I cared about with D2 and it wasn't something I expected in D3.
The story isn't dumb, it just wasn't executed well.
#3 is just silly and you clearly don't play hardcore so I'm not even going to discuss it.
Back to the article. The auction houses weren't necessarily a bad idea, it's just I felt the game mechanics didn't lend to auction houses. There's little demand for legendary items, there are too few legendary items, the droprates are still ridiculously low, and the stats are more than likely garbage. It just doesn't work.
The issue is not just about having an auction house present in the game....its the associated drop rate, GIVEN that there is an AH present, that has killed it (or at the very least made it a different experience than D2)
If you boil Diablo II down, many enjoyed the game for the drops (and the fairly reasonable chance to get good loot). It was the equivalent of a fairly balanced slot machine....pays out just enough to keep you plugging away.
Had Blizzard kept the same reasonable drop rates for D3, the AH would have been flooded & saturated with cheap high power items that would have made the PvE encounters negligible. To "balance" the inreased access to powerful items being farmed by the masses & placed on the AH....the drop rate of the monsters / bosses have been tuned down. Now you're dealing with a very STINGY slot machine that isn't paying out nearly enough to keep you interested.
I agree with poster above,
seems like the game was built around the RMAH and not the other way around.
More surprised that people are feeling vindicated over this. I didn't need him to announce it, there was never a doubt in my mind. The sole reason I didn't buy this game is because of the RMAH. I don't agree with a lot of the decisions I have read about them making in Diablo 3 but the RMAH was my line.
Meanwhile, snow is cold...