GameSpy’s Questions and Concerns About Diablo III

I’m not sure what prompted an assortment of Diablo III articles from all of the biggest gaming sites on the same day, but GameSpy also doled out their own editorial yesterday, with this one focusing on four major concerns they have about the action RPG threequel.

Concern #2: Going Once, Going Twice…

Cue the melodramatic villain music for the Real Money Auction House (RMAH). It’s easy to overreact to this type of feature. After all, there have always been plenty of places for people to purchase equipment and characters for Diablo II — and just as many places for them to get hoodwinked trying to buy equipment and characters for Diablo II.

In that regard, Blizzard’s thinking is sound: “Hey, if players are going to do it no matter what, why don’t we control it and guarantee it’s legit, and make a few bucks in the process?” But it’s also a Pandora’s Box of sorts. The idea of adding cash transactions to a hardcore game that’s all about earning better stuff has the little Han Solo in my mind saying “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

GameSpy’s Take: Questions abound: Is this a service Diablo fans actually want, or are Activision and Blizzard simply conceding to gold farmers and giving them the green light for a cut of the profits? Yes, Blizzard will charge fees for players to list their items and cash out their auction earnings. Just how much of a cut will Activision/Blizzard get from these transactions? Will Blizzard be incentivized to turn a blind eye toward disruptive gold farming in order to make more money? And how about the ramifications for PvP? Does Diablo III run the risk of becoming the ultimate pay-to-win game?

Pig and elephant DNA just won’t splice, and Blizzard’s experiment with a RMAH in Diablo III is bad mojo. I fear the game will become a hardcore version of Smurf Village. I joked about my addiction to Diablo II before, but for an entire country, the gambling-like implications of adding a real-money auction house to Diablo III are no laughing matter. South Korea threatened to ban the entire game if it wasn’t removed, and Blizzard quickly backed down.