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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Economy

It was just revealed that Diablo 3 will feature a dual-currency auction house for in-game gold and for real currency, allowing players to spend real money for Diablo 3 items. Blizzard will not sell those items directly but rather will facilitate auctions between players. Players will receive real currency for their sales, and Blizzard will take a cut off the sales of real-currency items. Blizzard is entering some pretty crazy territory with the Diablo 3 auction house, and the implications may be even more huge for the massively multiplayer market than for the Diablo multiplayer experience.

One of WoW"s biggest issues that currently plagues Blizzard (as well as the MMO genre in general) is the existence of a gray market in which companies sell in-game currency to willing buyers against the game"s terms of service. Many free-to-play MMOs and online games combat this market by selling their own currencies for use in-game, making the currency non-tradeable, or selling items in a microtransaction marketplace. Blizzard has not yet made a free-to-play MMO where these concepts could come to any kind of fruition, and WoW"s virtual goods store is very limited in scope and price point.

Continue reading What are the implications of a real-dollar auction house?

What are the implications of a real-dollar auction house? originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 01 Aug 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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