Diii: Wtf?

[WetWired]

http://kotaku.com/5825580/blizzard-will-let-you-sell-your-diablo-iii-loot-for-real-money

Now with officially sponsored RMT.
Unless you're a hardcore player, in which case, for some reason, you can't access the AH at all.

[D3V]

Lol wut? They're integrating two auction systems. You can use both currencies to buy and trade.

[kaos]

The mandatory Internet connection sucks. I'm not surprised they're trying to make money with AH, though. Maybe it's their way of telling all the online shops to fuck off.

[!King_Amazon!]

Has it been specified that it will require a constant internet connection or not? Starcraft 2 requires you to authenticate with a valid battle.net account to play the single player mode, but it doesn't require you to be constantly connected to the internet to play. If it's different for Diablo 3, I would suspect they are just requiring everyone to play on battle.net which would seem pretty lame to me. I see no problem with allowing people to play on a LAN with friends or single player without an internet connection, if authentication is required regardless. The claim I've heard regarding their motives is that they are doing this to prevent piracy.

[WetWired]

They've confirmed the requirement for always on and justify it by their AH feature. TBH, yes, the AH wouldn't work if stuff could be earned offline, giving hackers the opportunity to directly alter their save game, but what if I don't care about the AH and want to play truly solo?

[!King_Amazon!]

It seems obvious that if there were a singleplayer mode, you shouldn't expect to be able to trade items on battle.net from those characters. That's exactly how Diablo 2 functions, essentially. That's a pretty stupid justification for requiring a constant connection for any play.

[WetWired]

Pretty much.

Here's another excuse:
http://kotaku.com/5827807/always-online-diablo-3-shouldnt-surprise-you-according-to-blizzard-vp

[kaos]

I think in the long run they'd make more money if they used the AH but let people download the game for free.

[WetWired]

If they let people DL the game for free, they'd have to charge per class, or something. I'm sure they only take a small share of the money exchanged on the AH. It's not like the vanity pets and such in WoW where they keep the whole payment.

[!King_Amazon!]

Regardless, they have the potential to make a lot of money with this system. Though I don't think giving the game away for free would really increase their revenues any, as anyone who would be motivated enough to play the game and pay real money for the items would probably be motivated enough to spend $50 on the game to begin with regardless. I doubt many/any of the extra players they manage to get by giving the game away for free would contribute to their AH profits.

[WetWired]

The whole point of microtransactions is that people who are unlikely to spend a large sum at once will spend even more in smaller portions. If they were selling items outright and taking the full proceeds, they certainly could make more money that way, if you ignore the fact that it would severely piss off their fan base...