Over a year ago, Blizzard Entertainment released Diablo 3 to anxiously awaiting fans. Its launch was bumpy, to say the least, and for most fans of the franchise, the game didn’t live up to expectations. The addition of a Real Money Auction House (RMAH) has been under scrutiny even a year later, and was the core of a major issue with the game when Blizzard increased gold stacks from 1 million t0 10 million, causing an overflow bug that generated trillions of gold out of thin air. Even though that’s not an issue in today’s game economy, Blizzard is still battling it out with gold farmers and has decided to increase the stack of sellable gold on the RMAH to 50 million.
This is a major change to the game, especially considering Blizzard hasn’t added any major content or patches to Diablo 3 as of late. Even the most die-hard streamers have stopped playing the game, though most are hanging tight for the inevitable announcement of its expansion. But the major issue with the increasing of gold essentially ruins the game in many ways. For one, good item drops are rare enough as it is, making the experience for newcomers all the more frustrating. Those that play the economy will no longer post items up on the Gold Auction House, since Blizzard didn’t raise the limit on that – auctions still top out at 2-billion gold. Considering 2-billion gold will ultimately be worth $10 (the floor price for 50 million will inevitably hit $0.25) the better items in the game will always end up on the RMAH for anyone looking to get the best bang for their buck.
That ultimately means that Diablo 3 is slowly becoming a pay-to-enjoy game, not even a pay-to-win game. Horrendous drop rates due to the inclusion of an auction house has severely impacted the fun that the Diablo franchise is all about, and most players have had to resort to the auction house to progress in the game. To make matters worse, there has been a subculture of Diablo 3 gamers that play “self found” which essentially means their characters progress through the game with only items they found themselves. Which begs us to ask – why is that even the state of the game? Why is it a “different” type of gameplay to play self found? Shouldn’t Diablo 3 at its core be a self found game? Should people feel accomplished without having to go to the auction house?
Blizzard has been promising some major changes for Diablo 3 including itemization, but no major changes are expected to be made until the expansion of the game is released. The recent change to the RMAH gold price has already been met with plenty of disgust online, it’ll be interesting to see how Blizzard can bring Diablo 3 to a respectable state.
Source: Blizzard
