Diablo III Will Scare the Hell out of You

There’s a new hands-on preview of Diablo III up on GameSpot this evening, with this particular article’s main thesis being why the game will “scare the hell out of us”. And it’s not the type of fright that you might be thinking:

It won’t be the sight of a bloated corpse exploding into a cloud of snakes that frightens. It probably won’t be the visage of a once proud king, now merely a vessel for an evil spirit. In fact, no specific paranormal or demonic resident of Diablo III’s vast menagerie of hell’s starting lineup need concern would-be demon hunters, monks, barbarians, wizards, or witch doctors.

To the contrary, it will be the clicking of mice in the Diablo III auction house that will raise the most eyebrows and drop mouths agape, in fear of not only what it means for the game itself, but also what the ramifications are for future Blizzard games and the industry at large.

While it’s important to keep in mind that Diablo III and its auction house are still very much in beta, Blizzard has already made its intentions clear–it wants to create and control a safe space for equipment and gold transactions that originally occurred on auction sites outside of its domain. Also, every transaction that occurs for that new piece of armor or that enchanted sword lets Blizzard skim a set fee off the top.

It all seems very straightforward and harmless–an everyone-wins scenario. Some might even traverse Diablo’s wistfully detailed lands without ever knowing of the auction house’s existence, but here’s the sinister short and simple of it, part one: Blizzard just boldly (and perhaps unintentionally) subverted the free-to-play model, and it has done so by retaining all of the characteristics of that ecosystem while simultaneously charging an admission fee of $60 to access them. If the idea of grinding for gear or gold doesn’t sound that appealing, but spending real-world money for fake-world items does, then the auction house is the place to go, as long as you paid for the game like everyone else.

And that’s why Diablo III will likely go free-to-play (at least to level 20 or something) years down the road.