Diablo III: The Slot Machine RPG

IGN’s Charles Onyett certainly chose a, well, peculiar thing to compare Diablo III (and indeed every loot-focused game) to in his editorial, in which he tackles the newly introduced feature of a real-money auction house in Blizzard’s long-anticipated title. He doesn’t seem to mind the addition, going by this sampling:

What separates Diablo III from the other franchise entries is how items are shared between players. You can sell items to vendors, trade them to friends and put items up for auction for others to bid on with virtual currency. These are all standard features of any online-enabled role-playing game with a heavy emphasis on item acquisition, giving you multiple ways to share and amass virtual currency. The difference is Diablo III’s real money auction house, where you can post items for a real world price and profit directly from their sale.

By creating this system, Blizzard cuts out the need for those truly obsessed with item acquisition to turn to alternative, unauthorized markets. As a result, Blizzard makes money right alongside you on every transaction, and in return provides what hopefully proves to be a secure trading environment. I can understand how the idea of one person putting in 40 hours of play time to finally acquire a rare item while another might take 10 seconds and pay $40 to do the same thing might be upsetting. Instead of doing the ‘work’ of cutting through untold thousands of zombies, spiders and spirits, you open your wallet and merely buy your way to the top.

That person is like me at the slot machines, casually sitting down, dumping money in and coming away with a big reward, right next to a player who’s been spinning reels for days and received nothing but a mounting sense of panic. To the rich investor, the money goes in, the reward comes out. Irritated with having to invest time? Just throw some money at it, problem solved. It’s like the rich friend who buys the most expensive skis, poles, boots and gear to pizza wedge his way down the bunny hill.

Despite how annoying it is to see those who pay to avoid putting in as much time and effort as would otherwise be necessary, getting too hung up on it isn’t especially worthwhile in Diablo III’s case. First off, it’s not meant to be an eSports title; there is a player-versus-player mode, but it’s not supposed to be meticulously balanced like StarCraft II. I assume the PvP will be just for fun, like getting flying toilet kills with grav guns in Half-Life 2: Deathmatch. Second, you don’t have the deal with the show offs if you don’t want to. This isn’t an MMO like World of Warcraft where you’re forced to trot by the prideful mobs of players posted up in city centers, sponging up the stares of pitifully clothed low level players until their egos are satiated. Third, you don’t have to use the real money auction house at all. And fourth, you can actually make money.