This is a continuation of the RMT discussion, but on the subject of botting.
Remember that the decision to implement RMT into Diablo 3 was not an easy one. Blizzard, not Activision, makes these decisions and they're not made lightly. They're thoroughly researched, well thought out, considered, and all angles investigated.
EVP Rob Pardo said that they were "thinking about the trading game for a while" and one of the reasons for doing this was because of the changing landscape of games, the different business models, and it "benefits the players, provides more entertainment, is more fun".
So, you can assume that Blizzard already knows the following;
* In black marketing trading, the two traders are known to each other. The trade is made knowingly, meaning that both accounts are susceptible to banning.
* The Cash Auction House is anonymous.
* If a player buys a new character on the CAH that was botted, they have plausible deniability. Meaning that the receiver of the botted character is free of disciplinary action.
* If a player buys an item gained through exploitation, the same. (Item duping, speed hacking, and teleporting will happen.)
* These are all immediate and final sales. The innocent receiver cannot be banned, only the guilty seller.
Under the old system, buyers and sellers alike work through blackmarket websites and there are systems in place to monitor shady dealings like transferring ownership of B.NET accounts.
Under the new system, there is only a monitoring system for catching the guilty seller. A cheater could sell 40 accounts before they get caught, but Blizzard can't just reclaim those accounts since most of them could have been in use for several months after purchase. The same is true for duped items or loot gained through exploitation.. several days or weeks after the sale, Blizzard can't just repossess them or rollback the account to weeks past. It wouldn't be fair.
Repossession or rollbacks of ill-gotten gains could only happen fairly if it happens within hours or a couple days at most. And that's after a full investigation is completed.
Blizzard would know all of this.. ie, that people will be "legitimately" playing botted-accounts or using items gained through exploitation.
So really, this is a method of almost legitimizing botting. :) Sales are immediate and final, and the buyer of the botted account or exploited gold can't be punished. It's a long process before the seller is caught, so the legit gold selling system and enforced anonymity permits this to happen and Blizzard should know this.
Not only that, but the new Auction House system makes botting much easier. In World of Warcraft, botters would need to travel back to cities to sell items or manually list on the Auction House. This is no longer the case. Players can now open the auction house interface from anywhere in the game to sell items. That is a huge advantage for botters.. I can't even begin to describe how amazingly great this is for botters and farmers. So far, things are getting much easier for botting and not more difficult.
On a side note, I've seen that a lot of people are defending the implementation of RMT by saying that "it's already happened." They forget, though, that it was a blackmarket and there's a ton of high risk involved from both the seller and Blizzard. Not only that, but it was only used by a small percentage of players. It's like going from 5% of subscribers on the blackmarket to 80% of subscribers in the new legit system. There's no comparison here, and you can't say "well, it's already been happening and players pay to win already.."
Personally speaking, I'm not for or against RMT officially, I'm just detailing what's happening and what will happen. I'll be playing the RMT system though for entertainment purposes.. I can see the negatives and positives, and I'll just personally weigh accordingly as I experiment with it.
