Sunday, May 6, 2012

Diablo 3 and...well...just Diablo 3.

There has been a lot of talk lately as gamers get all antsy in their pantsy about Diablo 3's upcoming release date, May 15th.

Aside from Diablo 3 and the occasional and non-life-changing updates and patches to various RLs around the "internets", there hasn't been a whole lot of news on the Rogue-front.

While Diablo 3 has been the subject of much hype and fan-boy salivation there are those who aren't too enthused about the real money "Auction House".

Many beta testers have in fact lamented that there is a disctint drop in decent loot in Diablo 3.  It sounds to me like they have increased the "grinding" on Diablo 3 to a God-like level or what you may also know as Every-Korean-MMORPG-Ever-Made.  It makes sense of course to avoid market saturation but it sounds like the odds are in the casino's favor more than they are in yours.

Blizzard's take from auction sales has also been criticized.  Blizzard charges a dollar for you to post the item, regardless of whether or not it sells.  For stackable items they take a 15 percent cut on all sales.  Alright!  You finally sold something and want to transfer it to your PayPal?  Blizzard takes a 15 percent cut on top of that!  Then of course you have to pay the PayPal transaction fee as well.  So if you're selling commodities it will cost you a dollar plus 30 percent of the sale to post, sell an item and pull the money out.  For non-stackable items it will cost you a dollar plus 15 percent to post, sell and pull out your greenbacks.

You can find out more about the auction house drama here at Gamespot.

Server Regions are separated into 3 categories, Americas, Europe and Asia.  To give you an idea of the lumping going on here the Americas includes US, Canada, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia.  Europe includes Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa, Middle East and UAE.  Asia includes South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

Talk about one of these not being like the other.  I'm expecting there to be some serious server division and possibly some straight up hate between some players.

There is something called Global Play which will allow players to Region jump to play with their friends but you basically only get to take yourself and won't be able to transfer any items between Regions because God knows, if a US player took a glowing, purple sword from a South Korean player and brought it back to the Americas server the whole world would implode.

And as some added last minute disappointment D3 will not ship with PVP and supposedly Auction House will take at least a week before it's up and running in the Americas and longer in other regions.

So in other words, get ready for the release! ...and then get ready to continue beta testing it.

Game on!