If you have the means and web development experience, I would recommend that you start working on a simple replacement for Diablo 3 Trade Chat as soon as possible and start promoting it. (I'll help if it's a good webapp.)

Bashiok has recently confirmed that D3 will only have private chat, and there won't be any open or public channels. The reason for this change is to prevent player trading and linking of items, forcing them to use the Auction Houses (ideally, the Real Money Auction House.)

They're in there right now. Unless people are expecting general open channels? We've consistently said we won't have those.

Blizzard has consistently stated that they won't have general chat?

It was said once. By Bashiok. 6 MONTHS AGO. And he said Chat Channels were working and that it would be like Diablo II IRC style.

Chat channels are in, and working. They're more like the Diablo II IRC style than the individual chat windows like StarCraft II has.

Having ways for friends and acquaintances to create social groups has been in the long term plans of the new Battle.net for some time. Whether they're called clans or not is a smaller detail. It's just getting the time to work on adding in those types of want-to-have features. Almost assuredly not for the launch of the game, but hopefully at some point in the future.

This change is another method, just like the recent stash size changes, to force use of the RMAH. Even if the RMAH isn't used directly, it's still used indirectly in many cases since pro users will be purchasing Gold Auction House items, converting to gold, and then selling it for cash.

Players will still want to trade items and engage in private sales, though, to avoid costly Auction House expenses. Or maybe they just don't want to take the risk of selling a valuable item on the RMAH, and would rather trade for it.

So, grab yourself a good name (like D3XCHANGE.COM, which is currently available) and give the players something they need: a very user-friendly website where players can simply select a region to join a Trade Chat IRC-like interface. No sign-in or registration required, posts require Captcha to prevent spam, and just make it really easy for players to come and go from.

This can't be a forum, IRC, or any other kind of overcomplicated process or something requiring an third-party application. It has to be something simple and easy, just like IMGUR.COM.

It's too bad item linking isn't possible (due to Blizzard's strict no mod policy), but eventually a item DB feature could be added for easier linking.

* UPDATE (02/08/2012):

I already talked about this in the comments below, but decided to add it to the post since they're often skipped.

The thing you have to remember is that spam is not an issue these days. It's not 1998 anymore and spam is easily preventable. If you work for a large business, you've probably seen their standard spam filters at work. Even if you own a GMail account, their spam system is incredible. Out of hundreds of thousands of spam messages, 1 might make it through and even then it's flagged as spam.

Within online games, there are many ways to prevent spam. Rift, for example, locks out general chat until the player reaches a certain (low) level. Spam is hardly ever an issue, because their support team addresses it so quickly, players are banned, and the spammers need to purchase a brand new $60 game. It's not worth their time spending $60 each time.. not only does it take a lot of time to setup, they might only be able to target a few individuals before they get banned. Spammers gave up because it wasn't worth the time and investments.

And that's just one simple method. There are also player reporting thresholds if you're limited on support staff (if enough unique players report someone specifically, they can be silenced until an investigation takes place), timer restrictions or flood protection, keyword detection, player preferences (they need to manually join the channels, or they can squelch channels), chat can be unlocked using non-scripted processes (leveling, doing a quick puzzle in-game, etc.), or even captchas are available.

Spamming existing in Diablo 2 because Blizzard never really tried to prevent spamming (it was possibly a technology limitation). In D2, key generators existed where spammers could create as many CD-Keys as they wanted without any cost. Even if they were banned, it didn't matter.. they didn't need to purchase a new CD-Key and had thousands more available. Spamming was (is) fairly easy in WoW due to Blizzard's very limited support staff, trial accounts, and they fully support modding. Their only preventative spam measures were 20-year old basic flood protection algorithms. It's gotten a lot better now than how it was.

Diablo 3 is a completely different beast, though. It's smaller, easier to support, and easier to patch or upgrade with new changes. Most importantly, though, Diablo 3 does not permit mods, and Warden will be actively searching for any third-party applications that interact with the game. Automation is detected and users are banned quickly (spam being extremely easy to detect compared to character botting.) And every time they're banned, a replacement spambot will cost $60. It's absolutely not worth the spammers time or money. And even then, this is without a rudimentary spam chat filter. If they were to employ a simple level restriction (and prevent D3 demos from public communication), it would pretty much end spam.

You might think to yourself; "Well, if Blizzard allows spamming, then they could make money from these spammers since every time they get banned, they have to pay another $60." But spammers aren't idiots, they're not even going to be spamming within Diablo 3 in the first place due to the high cost of replacement involved.

Simply put, there's not going to be any spamming in the first place, so there's no need for spam protection!

So, Blizzard is removing an essential communication feature for either two purposes. It either forces trading to happen within the Auction Houses, or it's used to prevent annoying spam and improve the customer experience.

But.. there's not going to be any spam in the first place! That just leaves forced AH use.

* UPDATE (02/08/2012):

So, either we had a Real ID incident where the public outcry finally forced Blizzard to change their stance on Public Chat within Diablo 3, or Bashiok wasn't reading the forums for almost 4 days and he just now realized he made a mistake.

Blizzard is now implementing public chat within Diablo 3.

It was always there, of course, since JW already confirmed it was part of the game. Question is.. did they intend on actually turning it on, or did they wait to see what the community thought first?

Yesterday, I touched on the Shared Stash changes and how it could be used as a business opportunity to monetize slot size upgrades and many other in-game "services".

For example, if Blizzard were to make the gold-collecting pets an extremely rare drop, they would then be sold on the RMAH. Those pets are extremely useful in-game and would be highly sought after. In essence, you're paying for a gold collection service using real cash.

I liked the idea so much, that I've decided to expand upon it.

Here are a collection of virtual items that could have low drop rates, forcing them to be sold on the Real Money Auction House:

• Items or Scrolls that magically increased your Stash, Shared Stash, and Bag Space slots. For example, a "Scroll of Minor Bag Space" that increases your slots by 3.
• Rare summon scrolls for those gold collecting pets.
• Even more rare summoning scrolls that summon pets that gain +10% gold. Just like the Daeity pet. (Blizzard, hint hint.)
• Vendor potions that increase your selling or buying prices for a fixed time or fixed number of items.
• Salvaging potions that improve salvage results for a fixed time or fixed number of items. Same for better enchants, gems, etc.
• Remove Experience Shrines, and instead have rare "+15% XP Gain" potions.
• Rare potions of Magic Find and Gold Find that complement your gear. These would be time based spells (e.g. 30 minutes.)
• Collecting multiple rare potions that can be mixed together to create new and improved effects.
• Selling "normal" Paid Services but as virtual items instead. Like Paid Name Changes, but using the RMAH instead.
• A portal scroll (like in Torchlight) where the player is transported to a small zone with above average loot and/or a guaranteed rare spawn. Because players might be paying $1-5 for something like this, it's sort of their version of DLC since it's an area inaccessible to most players unless they purchase it.
• The return of the Nephalem Cube and the Cauldron of Jordan, except that they're rare drops, they're tiered, and they require rare "upgrades". For example, you can only break down level 10 items when you get the initial item. You purchase pieces or upgrades to the item on the RMAH, and then you can break down up-to level 20 items, etc. Sort of like a cash sink vs gold sink.
• Mailbox upgrade items. Several items that allow you to upgrade your personal mailbox and it's appearance. Allows you to send more items at once and lowers postage fees.

If you have any other clever ideas for a paid in-game "service" (like experience gain, more cash, or faster travel), let me know and I might add it. :)

These items are so useful, especially for farmers and hardcore RMAH users, that Blizzard doesn't even have to restrict the items or try to force users to sell them on the RMAH. They'll be so rare and useful that they'll ALWAYS end up on the RMAH.

Other than "services", the Diablo 3 developer team has also been working through multiple iterations of the rune system. Skills could easily be bought from vendors, learned, or be personalized, but I think their intention is to make Runes sellable on the RMAH. The highest tiered runes will only be available on the RMAH, unless you're really lucky. This forces users to pay (in cash) to get new skills. I think this was the main reason why they have been having so many rune problems.. they've been forced to monetize the skill system, which significantly limits their creativity.

* UPDATE:

On February 7, 2012 Bashiok was posed the question about the removal of items (like scrolls) from the game, and if Blizzard planned on monetizing them in any way.

His response was:

@WilliamCairns1 We didn’t remove them so we could charge people for them later, if that’s your question.

So, this is the Blizzard Promise™. The Cauldron, Cube, ID scrolls, summoning scrolls, etc. will NOT be item drops when they return, players will get them for free (they won't cost gold or cash), and they will be "soulbound" (cannot be traded in any way.)

Shared Stash Changes

One of our readers asked me to comment on the reduction of the shared-stash size from 5 pages down to 3. Rather than leaving a comment, I'll just make a post about it (because it might get a little long.)

First, I want to address what Bashiok told his customers was the "reason" for this change.

found it necessary to ensure we could handle what we anticipate will be a large amount of data very quickly after release.

We obviously have room to grow if our projections are incorrect, or we just find that we eventually have the space.

He is giving users the impression that they don't have the server performance or infrastructure to handle the MASSIVE number of items that players will collect.

This is total bullshit and couldn't be farther from the truth. They've used this excuse in the past (the most immediate one to come to mind is the justification of the upcoming WoW Item Squish.)

Apparently, their databases are significantly limited and cannot scale. So I guess each character database entry can contain 500,000 fields, but 500,500 is just way too much for their databases to handle? I wish they would just be more open with their real reasons, rather than assuming their customers are idiots. (Sadly, most will believe him.)

In World of Warcraft, I had 15 guild banks with full bank tabs available on all of them. Even that wasn't enough for the number of items I had collected. And they weren't just hoarded items, either.. I was constantly selling these items and using the guild banks for crafting purposes or temporary storage of valuable AH items. In many cases, I was using them for long term storage for hundreds of Ruby Glasses (on different realms) to be sold when the prices increased.

The 5 slots in the Diablo 3 beta were not nearly enough for my needs. Even for a casual player, it was pretty limited considering that Diablo 3 is a loot centric game and Blizzard has kept pushing the loot quantity aspects of the game and reminding us of just how important massive storage will be.

Blizzard claims that they don't want players to mule, but this is exactly what was going to happen even before these changes. With the new limitation, there are going to be even more mule characters.. but aren't we limited to 10 characters per region? It's going to be brutal.

The real reason for this change has nothing to do with infrastructure or technology limitations, but rather they want players constantly "doing something" with the items. Eventually, when you don't have space for it, you'll either break it down (into gold or crafting mats) or you'll sell it. Even if you break it down into gold, eventually the gold sinks won't be enough, and you'll want to sell it. Whatever the case may be, Blizzard wants to you SELL IT and it will directly or indirectly end up on the RMAH.

Gold can only be sold on the Real Money Auction House. And it doesn't matter if you only sell items on the Gold Auction House, because someone will buy it and re-sell it on the RMAH anyways. These are all things they've learned from Diablo II.. when players run out of space, they sell it for gold, mule it (and then eventually sell it), trade it, or sell for cash on the blackmarket.

The reason for this change is simply to push RMAH use.

.. And These Changes Allow For Other Forms of Monetization

Bashiok claims that this is just temporary, so players should fully expect Blizzard to increase the number of slots shortly after their "testing" is completed. But I think that's a lie to cover up their intention to leave it as three. I think the extra slots will be made available at some point in the future. Wouldn't it be terrible and incomprehensible if Blizzard were to somehow monetize the slot size upgrades?

From a business and gaming perspective, you can disguise this activity by creating special "runes" or "item upgrades" that drop with extremely low drop chances. When you use these rare items, they will increase your bag or stash size. Because they are so valuable, players will sell these items on the RMAH. :)

Blizzard might also do this with gold-collecting pets when they make a return. Originally, Blizzard just gave these support pets to players for virtually nothing.. but when they make a return, they might be rare drops. When this happens, players lucky enough to get them will sell them on the RMAH.

In essence, you'll be spending cash to obtain an in-game service (the pets help you collect more gold.)

The beauty of this is that there will be guaranteed buyers for both the pets and "Stash-Size Increasing Runes". Hardcore RMAH users will especially be interested in purchasing all of these services or upgrades.

So, Blizzard.. if you haven't already considered this, but end up doing it, please make sure you name one of the Stash/Bag Size Upgrade items after me. :) Some players might not like it, but it's a great approach to monetizing services and upgrades within the game and very clever from a business perspective. If not, just be boring as usual and increase the shared stash pages in your next expansion pack. Too much monetization of the game can ruin your image, and most players will just be very happy to see the 5 slots back in the game.

Diablo 3 Item Duping Is Un-Possible

Over this past week, there have been Battle.net forum posts about item duping in the Diablo 3 beta. Truth is, it's actually been around for a while now in the beta but not too many users knew about it until recently.

Previously, hacking and duping was thought to be impossible in Diablo 3. Forum users, fanboys, and even gaming sites or blogs have frequently stated (sometimes as "a fact") that duping would be impossible in Diablo 3. Blizzard has said it would be impossible due to the game being online only, but it's mostly the users on the official forums who say it's impossible.. and they're never corrected.

Back in August, I had wrote all about this.

The Diablo 3 Retail will absolutely still have cheating, speed hacking, botting, and item duping tricks. Most of the item duplication you won't even know about. It will take years to finally close all of the gaps, the economy won't be anywhere where it should be (you'll never even know it though), and even then after years of patches, certain groups will still be duping items without Blizzard's knowledge. It still even happens in WoW, you just don't know about it since the "hacks" aren't shared publicly.

Two days ago, I had said to expect a new Battle.net Terms of Use to roll out soon, and once the new contract was live, users (who even signed the older one) would be presented with a new TOU that contains D3 / PayPal / RMAH related revisions.

It just went live earlier this morning.

The new Battle.net Terms of Use are actually dated "Last Revised December 10, 2011", however the official US link to the TOU (as of today) is still showing the old May 25, 2010 contract.

Interestingly, this TOU was updated on December 10, but it has only gone live just recently for others to see. It wasn't posted online for a good month and apparently Blizzard has been sitting on this new contract since December 10. On December 9, by the way, Blizzard first revealed the "Battle.net Balance" system and stated that it would be rolled out within a few weeks (it's been over 8 weeks now.)

You should see this information hit fan sites and the larger blogs later today or tomorrow.

As I had said in the earlier post, the sudden appearance of the old Terms of Use was just a prelude to a new TOU for users to sign.

Omega, Blizzard's Forum MVP, however stated that this was not the case at all. He reassured users that this was actually just an old feature, and the recent appearance was nothing more than Blizzard simply resetting the "has already read" checkbox to remind some users to review it again...

Daeity 1, Omega 0. :)

New Knowledge Base Articles Too

Some users are reporting that they were able to visit their eBalance Purchase page briefly, but that feature has now been removed and disabled. (Original US link, EU link.)

There are also new Support articles live that contain a wealth of new information. These are the US links, but EU users can search for Battle.net Balance or PayPal to see the new KB articles.

One was last updated January 20, with the others just yesterday afternoon ("Updated: 1/30/12 2:37 PM".)

Battle.net Balance Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Syncing PayPal with Battle.net

Adding Funds to Battle.net Balance

Changes to the Terms of Use

Here's what a cursory glance revealed. If I missed anything important, please let me know and I'll add it.

• A brand new section all about the new PayPal/RMAH system:
  

  6. Storing Value on the Account.
  
  A. The Account can be loaded with funds that can only be used to purchase goods and services on Battle.net. The Account is not a credit line, overdraft protection or deposit account. Unless otherwise required by law or permitted by this Agreement, all balances on the Account are non-refundable and may not be redeemed for cash. The Account does not expire, and you will not be charged fees for any reason. Funds which are loaded onto an Account do not accrue interest, and are not insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
  
  B. To load value onto the Account, go to https://us.battle.net/account/management/ebalance-purchase.html and follow the instructions provided to you on the page. All Account transactions are governed by the Terms of Sale, which can be viewed at https://us.battle.net/account/management/transaction-history.html. The minimum amount that can be loaded to an Account is $1.00, and the maximum daily Account balance is limited to $200.00. Blizzard reserves the right to change the maximum and minimum amounts at any time. You may load different currencies onto the Account (e.g., US Dollars, Mexican Pesos, Chilean Pesos, Argentinian Dollars) in order to engage in transactions on the Diablo III Real Money Auction Houses that use those currencies. The value loaded onto the Account shall be determined by converting the value of each of the various currencies that you have loaded onto the Account to US Dollars using the currency conversion formulas posted on http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3021-forex.html. All amounts loaded onto the Account are held and denominated in U.S. currency. Blizzard will not send you a statement of itemized transactions on the Account. In order to check the balance loaded on the Account, or review recent transactions on the Account, to go https://us.battle.net/account/management/transaction-history.html and follow the instructions on the page.
  
  C. Funds loaded onto the Account are used like cash for purchases on Battle.net, and you are responsible for all transactions made by someone using the Account. If you suspect that the Account has been compromised, you should contact Blizzard Customer Service at http://www.battle.net/support. The balance on the Account will only be protected from the point that Blizzard issues a message to you indicating that Blizzard has received your notice that the Account may have been compromised. From that point forward, Blizzard will take actions to freeze the remaining balance on the Account, and will unfreeze the Account once Blizzard has returned the control of the Account back to you.
  
  D. If Blizzard believes that the Account contains funds acquired illegally, either by means of compromising other Accounts or otherwise, Blizzard may remove those funds, suspend your access to the Diablo III Real Money Auction House, terminate the Account, and/or exercise any additional legal remedies available.
  
  E. If you agree to purchase goods or services from Blizzard and thereafter default upon your obligation to pay for such a purchase, you hereby agree that Blizzard shall have the right to freeze any funds currently loaded onto the Account and/or to remove and use those funds to fulfill your payment obligations in full or in part.

• The "9. Ownership" section has been expanded to include the RMAH:
  

  C. Virtual Items. Blizzard owns, has licensed, or otherwise has rights to all of the content that appears in the Service or the Games. You agree that you have no right or title in or to any such content, including without limitation the virtual goods or currency appearing or originating in any Game, or any other attributes associated with the Account or stored on the Service. Blizzard does not recognize any purported transfers of virtual property executed outside of a Game, or the purported sale, gift or trade in the "real world" of anything that appears or originates in a Game, unless such transfer is made using a marketplace administered by Blizzard, including without limitation the Diablo III Real Money Auction Houses.

• The whole section "7. The Blizzard Online Store" has been cut out of the TOU.

• The "Account Suspension/Cancelation" section has been expanded to include "a Game-specific Terms of Use", rather than just the Battle.net TOU and other agreements.

• A new entry in the "General" section has been added to let you know Blizzard will be collecting a bunch of information from your PC:
  

  E. Collection of Non-Personal Data. Blizzard shall have the right to obtain data that cannot be used to identify you from your connection to the Service without any further notice to you. Certain Games playable on the Service include a tool that will allow your computer system to forward information to Blizzard in the event that the Game crashes. This tool will collect system and driver data from your computer system during the crash, and forward a report containing that data to Blizzard.

• The "Massive Inc" in-game advertisements section, that was originally created for Starcraft 2, has been completely removed and replaced with a more general "expect there to be advertising in the game."
  

  16. DISCLOSURES; THIRD PARTY FEATURES.
  
  A. Advertising. Blizzard’s Games and the Service may incorporate third party technology that enables advertising on Battle.net and/or in certain Games playable on Battle.net, which may be downloaded temporarily to your personal computer and replaced during online game play. As part of this process, Blizzard and/or its authorized third party advertisers may collect standard information that is sent when your personal computer connects to the Internet including your Internet protocol (IP) address.

The Interesting Bits From All Of This

• Blizzard and it's third party advertisers may collect "standard information" from your computer system. They were very ambiguous about this.. they did not specifically state "non-personally identifying information" like Warden and they stated that their advertisers may collect information from your PC when it's connected to the Internet. This could pretty much mean anything at all and at any time, including personally identifying details.


• Users worldwide will soon be able to use PayPal to purchase anything you want from the Blizzard Store, and it's no longer just limited to WOW Subscriptions.


• There seems to be a PayPal / Battle.net location check, like what I was predicting months ago.


• The Battle.net Balance maximum limit is $500.00 USD.


• You can add funds in increments of $10.00, $20.00, $50.00 or $100.00. Or, users can select "Other Amount". According to the Terms of Use, a minimum amount of $1.00 must be loaded and there is a maximum daily balance of $200.00 permitted.
  


• If Blizzard suspects that you cheated in any way to acquire your Battle.net Balance funds, they can remove all of your Battle.net Balance and suspend your access to D3 or your Battle.net account. There are a few other sections that also discuss the non-refundable conditions for your Battle.net Balance credits.


• If a prepaid credit card is declined, there's a $1.00 temporary hold of funds for each transaction attempt.


• Regional stuff: ".. you will be able to add value to your Battle.net Balance using your local currency (in EU, for example, players will be able to use Euros, GBP, and RUB). In certain regions where game realms and servers are shared by players in multiple countries, you will be given the option to choose one single currency. However, please note that Battle.net Balances for different currencies are tracked separately and cannot be used interchangeably. For example, you cannot use Battle.net Balance purchased using U.S. dollars in a non-USD-based auction house, and you are not able to transfer Battle.net Balance purchased in one currency to or from Battle.net Balance purchased with a different currency."


• Right now, you can't transfer B.Net Balance as a gift to others, but they plan on adding that feature in the future.


• Battle.net Balance cannot be used as an automated payment method for recurring WOW subscriptions.


• This TOU was revised specifically for Diablo 3, but you can expect another revision to happen as the SC2 Marketplace gets closer to completion.


• If you're a regular reader here, you'll know that I had been anticipating these changes this week since they were needed as a precursor to the release date announcement. Once the announcement is made (Monday, Feb 6 being the most probable at this time), the Battle.net Balance system will be fully implemented with the D3 Digital Pre-Download being made available sometime afterwords. After this is done, it will also be followed by new posts and official announcements about the PayPal and B.Net Balance system with instructions on how players can setup their accounts and start using it right away. All that remains now is if the actual release date will be 2 months from the announcement (traditions), or a condensed timeframe (which has been discussed in the past.)

On a final note.. boo-yah.

* UPDATE:

The "Battle.net Balance" and "PayPal Syncing" Knowledge Base Articles have just been removed by Blizzard. :)

I'm not sure if this is just temporary, or if they weren't supposed to reveal these Knowledge Base articles until the announcement (or later this week). If you didn't catch them earlier, you can still see their Google cache.

Go to Google.com and type:

"cache:http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/syncing-paypal-with-battlenet"
or
"cache:http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/adding-funds-to-battlenet-balance-3100032"

* UPDATE:

The "Syncing PayPal with Battle.Net" article is back up, and it's now showing an "Updated: Jan 31, 2012".

The "Battle.net Balance" article has been down for several hours now. It's possible that the Battle.net Balance article wasn't supposed to be put up until another announcement (front page post) took place first. Obviously, right now players can't even add money to their Battle.net Balance accounts so the support article is useless.

As you know, I'm still waiting for that Battle.net Balance to be implemented, and I have suspected for some time that Blizzard may be having some PayPal or RMAH/Balance integration issues.

Coming Soon: Battle.net Balance
We’ll be rolling out the new Battle.net Balance feature in the weeks ahead.

It's been over 7 weeks now, and the Battle.net Balance feature has still not been rolled out.

I also noticed something else related to this delay. About a week before Mike's "Soon Was Too Soon" post, Blizzard also revealed that they were going to allow PayPal to be used to purchase Blizzard products and services on Battle.net. However this time, it would be available for several regions, and not just limited to WOW Subscriptions for NA users only.

PayPal will also soon be added in several regions as a payment option on Battle.net, providing another convenient and secure payment method for digital purchases of Blizzard products and services.

We’ll share region-related specifics, as well as further details on everything mentioned above, in the near future. Stay tuned!

This information was supposed to be revealed in the "near future". And, I assume that based on what they're saying, that both the RMAH Region Information and PayPal integration details would be revealed at the same time. Some of the RMAH Region details have already been revealed, but what happened to the PayPal system? It's been 5 months now.

Finding Delays Where They're Not Telling You

It's been made quite clear that the past (and current) delays have not been a result of game development process. They've had the luxury of extra time to add new features and content, there's been no crunch time, no rush, and due to Jay Wilson's recent "major update", we've learned that they're not even adding new content, but rather just making minor changes and deleting content.

Since we're left in the dark, there are other signs of delays to look out for that might give us an idea of what's going on. For example, if we discovered that they were having major hiring problems, not enough customer support, or enough developers on a game, we would know that it would be a reasonable explanation for delaying the game.

The South Korea Approval issues definitely had an impact to their timeline. And these other delays in announcements are also confirming my suspicions that PayPal and B.Net Balance systems have also caused a major delay in their release schedule.

Even their special definition for future time was changed. Mike said that "Soon Was Too Soon", admitting that even their expectations for "Soon" had to be pushed back significantly because "Soon" didn't end up being what they thought their "Soon" release would be. I hope that made sense.

As well, both "Near Future" and "Coming Weeks" have always meant about 2-3 weeks for Blizzard. But in the case of PayPal and the B.Net Balance roll outs, they became several months instead.

So, the Battle.net Balance system was delayed (we can't charge up our accounts with PayPal or any other credit system yet), the RMAH Cashing Out feature with PayPal was delayed, and the PayPal system for purchasing Blizzard Store items was delayed.

Are there internal problems with PayPal? Is this a technical or systems integration issue? Are there legal problems? Is PayPal getting cold feet after hearing about the SK Government Gambling issues? After all, online gambling (in itself) isn't illegal in most US states, but the transactions to/from online gambling sites are illegal. PayPal would be taking far more risks (UIGEA) than Blizzard in this case.

Or, perhaps Blizzard is implementing new security systems internally (and with PayPal) to ensure that prohibited countries are not able to participate in the RMAH? (A difficult task considering that SK players can register a US B.Net account, and it's a region-free game.)

I've talked about these subjects before though. When PayPal is finally implemented, I suspect that there will be new security or regional payment restrictions in place to limit players to specific countries (both through their B.Net Account and PayPal.) I don't think there's anything stopping users from buying the Region-Free Diablo 3 from overseas retailers, though, and playing it in their own country. That's if they even know it's region free. It's something that still hasn't been officially announced.. and for good reason.

Selling Skills

While on the subject of these PayPal announcements and the RMAH, there's one subject that I'm surprised more people haven't talked about. I've known about it for a really long time now, but I never really had a reason to talk about it; Blizzard wants the RMAH used for selling skills and not just items.

It's actually a really smart business move. Rather than limiting yourself to selling items (which improve the damage of skills), why not just sell the skills and their effects too?

When PayPal first announced their partnership with Blizzard, they pointed out Blizzard's intention to sell runestones (which represent skills) on the RMAH:

They’ll also be able to use PayPal to cash out any real-money proceeds they receive from the sale of items — such as weapons, armor, runestones, and other loot obtained in the game world — via the currency-based auction house. (There will also be a separate gold-based version of the auction house that uses in-game gold for item transactions.)

By the D3 Dev Team wanting to make runes so that they could be sold on the RMAH, I think that this was the reason why they had so many problems deciding on an approach, and why they had so many iterations of the rune system.

I imagine that the business department told them what they wanted done, and how they wanted to ensure that the runestone (skill) system had a monetary aspect. Because of this pressure and restriction in place, it changed their design principals and they had to work around the limitation rather than having the freedom to innovate. It's no surprise they had a lot of problems creating the rune system.. it had to be something that Blizzard could profit from.

The problem, though, is that the RMAH was designed for only high-end items. So, they would have had to give runes low drop rates in order to make them rare enough to sell on the RMAH. This would have seriously limited the development and growth of players causing frustration knowing that they would have to shell out cash for skill upgrades (buying rare runestones from the RMAH.)

I wonder if there's more of this planned or in another format? More testing of new concepts in D3 to see if they're successful enough for future games possibly? :)

Skills vs Items

If I was responsible for a game design, I would want to leverage the RMAH as much as possible and I would (try to) create a non-obvious method of selling skills/abilities without actually selling them directly as "skills". :)

For example, as players level they are rewarded with new skills when they hit certain milestones. However, for the skills to actually be useful, I would want the players to purchase upgrades to the skills that add new strategy, different behaviors, and new visual effects. On its own, "Kick" is pretty mediocre.. but when you purchase "Fire Kick", it's suddenly a great AOE attack. Makes sense right?

Collecting items is a lot of fun, but there's much more enjoyment to be gained when you are rewarded with new abilities. It's something you can see, it's unique, it's something you use actively (not a passive effect), and it can completely change your strategy or gameplay. Because skills change your gameplay, it's also a method of appeasing the players need for content consumption. Basically, gameplay needs to be "mixed up" to keep players interested. (Which is why I'm really worried about Diablo 3's "dead zone". There are no new skills to be achieved, and the grind won't be as much fun anymore without clear rewards and achievements with each new level.)

Gaining new skills is actually a more enjoyable reward system than items, leveling, pets, or achievements. Selling items or pets are easy, but trying to "sell skills" is a very difficult task since players associate it with necessity for growth. If they work hard, they should be rewarded.. there shouldn't be another limitation (monetary at that) on necessary growth. "I have to PAY for that skill? WTF!"

Players should be sort-of used to this, though. When they hit a certain level, they visit vendors, and they pay for the skill. But that's all part of the game, and it's much different when they see a skill being sold for cash by another player who has it.

Even though it's a really great idea to sell skills (from a business perspective), it's really hard to pull off. If they were to lower RMAH fees, low-medium rarity items and skills could be worked in, but that cuts down on their profit. And even then, it's skills for cash.

I think the only way to do it, that would appear fair to customers, is to make skills a reward system from hard work. You can have three options available: work hard to get it yourself, work hard in something else (gold farming) and buy it, or simply pay cash for it. So, skills could be obtained multiple times by the same person and sold to other players, but they need to work hard to get it each time and it results in cash payment. It's something that CAN NOT be left to random chance, it must be a clear goal at the end of certain timely tasks. Items can be random, but skills can't.

Rather than selling skills, perhaps developers should view it instead as an important piece of content consumption. You might not make money from it, but you can reduce future expenses (eg, development time, creativity, hiring staff.)

Whatever issues are revealed tomorrow (e.g. "core system mechanics"), they obviously can't say polish, bugs, player balance or runes. They'll need to come up with something really good.

Jay Wilson's post just went up moments ago.

So, Jay has been preparing this for a few weeks now and everyone was anticipating a significant post detailing the drastic mechanic changes and huge additions being made.

Boy, are they in for a surprise.

It ended up being exactly what I thought; they're still "polishing the game, the rune system, and minor UI changes". The same stuff they've been doing for months and months. It really can't get any more obvious than this; the recent explanation is not a good reason for the delay.

They're cutting out a ton of stuff (Cauldron, Identification, Mystic Artisan, Nephalem Cube, etc.) but they're adding one extra button. And, they're still constantly "tuning and making balance changes."

I am completely shocked that they tried to pass this off as their excuse.. I was expecting something really big, at the very least, that could have possibly explained the long delay. I imagine that others are beginning to clue in now after reading that "big update".

There must be something else going on. One suspicion is the RMAH, Battle.net Balance, and system integration with PayPal which has been postponed by several weeks now.

* UPDATE:

I'm not sure I really agree with this @Diablo tweet:

Jay Wilson (@angryrobotics) just released a wealth of insight into dev iteration & core game systems changes inc: http://ow.ly/8yAHo #D3

A wealth of information and core game system changes? Here's a summary of everything they actually did:

• We have been finishing and polishing the content for about a year now.
• Oh, and there's lots of work left to be done. Over the past few years, we've been tuning and making balance changes too.
• Most recently, we removed Scrolls of Identification. That took us about 5 minutes.
• We also removed the Mystic Artisan. Oh wow, this was a tough one.. took all day.
• We removed the Cauldron of Jordan and Nephalem Cube. 5 minutes.
• We removed salvage option from common white items. 5 minutes.
• We moved the fifth quick slot button. That took a while.. it was like 30 minutes of work.
• We moved the Stone of Recall button. 5 minutes of work.
• We moved the Salvage button to the Blacksmith Artisan instead. 10 minutes of work.
• We moved character stats to the Inventory UI. 15 minutes.
• We renamed Attack, Precision, Defense, and Vitality to Strength, Dexterity, Intellect and Vitality. In a way, we sort of brought back Willpower, which was actually removed from the game in late 2010. This didn't take any time at all, because we've already been experimenting with attribute changes over the past few years.
• We were able to complete all of these massive changes in 3 days, but trust me, we're still doing A LOT OF STUFF right now. It's like really busy. That's the Blizzard Promise™.

Basically, art, music, and programming are the forms of content in game development that take up the most amount of time. The changes that Jay Wilson described are all simple back-end database adjustments (text and numbers).. there has been no new content designed or added.. only deleted. Even the attribute changes are minor and they have been reworking it for years now.. even longer than they have been experimenting with runes. Everything described is nothing "new", it's really just polish.

* UPDATE:

I just want to make a clarification here. Jay Wilson's post shouldn't scare you at all.. this is just a stall for time to ease player frustration and to give the impression that some "real work" has been done (because it has nothing to do with the SK delays.) :)

To me, this does not mean a delay at all. Mark my words: all of these changes are DONE and they were probably completed weeks or months ago. Everything Jay detailed will very likely be in the next beta patch or patches. This IS and WAS NOT a lot of work and it should not worry you at all. This is all minor stuff that has been completed and they do NOT have a lot of work ahead of them.

Jay's post does not mean a delay. So, don't panic.

My only concerns now are with the B.Net Balance system and PayPal.

* UPDATE:

Post from Bashiok:

Keep in mind everything detailed in the article today is already in the game, and most of it is complete. Once you get Patch 10 and see that, I think it may sink in that these aren't theoretical changes we're still working on, they're changes we've completed.

Ah, here we go.. you guys need to start reading between the lines! :)

Read Bashiok's entire post; he just echoes what I've been saying. Most of this was probably completed a long time ago.. the Jay Wilson post is just to show that "something is being done". But it's all just minor stuff, meaning that there's something else delaying the game.

Diablo 3 has been approved for use in South Korea but this time without the cash-out feature. If you recall, in the second revision, Blizzard requested that the RMAH remain in-game but for Battle.net Credit only.

You can see the ratings for yourself here: http://www.grb.or.kr/Statistics/GameStatistics.aspx by searching for "Diablo III" or decisions made on 2012-01-13 (If you don't have a built-in translator, please goto http://translate.google.com first before visiting these URLs.)

The rating on Diablo III only shows "Violence", but there is no "Gambling" in the game. This seems to also indicate that the RMAH has been removed entirely.

Approved in SK on Friday the 13th by the way. :)

Based on various news articles, it sounds like Blizzard might have resubmitted it again, but with the RMAH completely removed. Based on the translation, it says that cash transactions between users were not subject to review because they were not implemented. It also says that if the service modification is made in the future, it's not subject to reclassification but it will face Law Review and other associated organizations. Basically, it's not the GRB's problem anymore if Blizzard decides to implement the RMAH.

I'll need our Korean translation expert to confirm this translation though.

If this is correct, it appears that Blizzard might have resubmitted another version that completely excluded RMAH (i.e., not even the B.Net Credit system) some time ago, knowing that this would finally fully approve the game.

* UPDATE:

According to the Korea Times, Blizzard did in fact submit a 3rd version of their submission, but this time without the RMAH entirely. There's no word on when it was submitted, but I'm guessing it was shortly after their 2nd submission (when they requested that the RMAH remain, but only for B.Net credit.) Which would have put it before this tweet too. :)

Korea Times also said that if it was added as a software update, it would face a new round of evaluations. (So it will still go back to the GRB, and won't directly face other government bodies like I originally interpreted from those other sources above.)

I'll see if I can find out when Blizzard submitted the 3rd revision. That aspect is what really interests me.

* UPDATE:

After some forum deletions, Bashiok has confirmed that the RMAH is still in the SK version, but that it will be using only the Battle.net Balance system (which was the second submission, meaning that it wasn't revised again.)

So, I was right, they have an auction house that uses Battle.net balance, which is separate from the gold auction house. There are some details I'm still fuzzy on because the Korea Battle.net balance works a bit differently from ours.

In any case, it won't be the currency-free option you're looking for.

There is a lot of confusion about this. Some sources still say the RMAH remains, others claim it has been removed completely.

* UPDATE:

Bashiok's locked thread that contradicted information about the RMAH has now been completely deleted. You can see the original here. There was nothing wrong with the thread to deserve deletion, other than Bashiok's information. So apparently, the Korea Times and the GRB must have been correct and the RMAH was removed completely.

• This post has been upgraded from "Minor" to "Significant Updates". A Public Relations representative from Irvine HQ has confirmed that the Korean Times article is correct. As you recall, I was waiting for a retraction, but instead there has been a confirmation. :)
  
  What was contained in the factual news (non-blog) source? Blizzard has a simultaneous global launch planned, it will be region-free for the first time in the company's history, each country will have identical software, and the Korean Board's decision has kept the game launching in other countries.
  
  Blizzard PR has also provided a quote that there are global launch plans, even though it was never officially announced. This is all some very credible evidence, and I can now call them "facts" which I wasn't able to do before. All of this confirms what I've been writing about to be accurate. :)
  

  Asked whether the situation might cause Blizzard to launch the game in other markets first, instead of a worldwide simultaneous release, Damron stated that “this will not impact our global launch plans.” Given this, a delay in the South Korean Market could impact the release in North America and Europe as well.

  Although the initial delay was caused by the SK issues, this means that Blizzard right now has plans to launch and the SK issues are no longer holding it back. Because they're having a worldwide simultaneous launch and you can't launch without all countries being in line, this means that Blizzard is plowing forwards with an expected approval. Meaning that Diablo 3 will be approved for use in SK either because Blizzard knows things are positive and it will be approved with the RMAH, or they're planning on stripping out the RMAH entirely. If this is the case, then they have a launch date planned already and it also might explain the confidence surrounding the new "Q1" statement instead of old "Early 2012" regurgitation. Atleast now you know why Bashiok had to be so ambiguous about his posts. :)

• Details about the Bethesda v. Interplay settlement have not been announced yet, but it appears that Bethesda has dismissed their lawsuit against Interplay. And by dismissing with prejudice, it might mean that Bethesda has made Interplay immune from being sued for the same reasons in the future. Can't wait to find out what really happened here. :)

• I've updated the "Diablo Delay Debate" post with additional information. I also moved that awesome "I'm a problem" Bashiok quote to my "Important Notices" page.

• The Korea GRB never made a final decision today. They meet every Wednesday and Friday and these constant delays in making a decision may force Blizzard's hand. Typically, release date announcements are made on Mondays (and right before their shareholders meeting, unless there's something unusual about the circumstances.) There won't be an announcement made next Monday, though, because Bashiok said that they still need to announce their new game changes "before or with the next beta patch."

• Bashiok confirmed that Blizzard is planning for a Q1 2012 release. So "Early" means Jan, Feb, or Mar.

• It also looks like Diablo 3 will indeed have Pre-Digital Downloads available. I wonder when (or if) the region-free announcement will be made and how this will work. For example, if you download the Digital Copy, they'll probably lock the game to the region's Battle.net that you downloaded it from. That way, you can't just download the game for a much cheaper price, but then register the game in your own country. Does that really matter though? If I setup a US Battle.net account, pay for and download the game, I still have the option of playing on faster AU servers and I can register my home region for the RMAH as AU. Will they have some security measure or process in place to prevent this though? (e.g. the B.Net account you register on automatically becomes your "home region" for RMAH.)

• I'm still working on another post about Titan, but I just haven't had a lot of time to work on it. It's getting pretty big too, so I might need to break it down into parts (surprised?). Really nothing much else going on, so don't be surprised if things are a little quiet around here. Until, that is, new or interesting information comes out.

I wasn't planning on posting anything today since there aren't really any new updates. We're still waiting and I wasn't really expecting anything less. :)

I was very surprised, though, that the Korea Times decided to weigh in on the ongoing issue. The last time they talked about Blizzard was back in September 2011 where one of their journalists discussed the GRB's AH Gambling concerns. What's nice about Korea Times is that it's a real newspaper, it's peer reviewed, and they have paid journalists. I really like sources like this because they're much better than what you can source from blogs/gaming sites.

Here were some of the interesting parts from the article:

• They did discuss Diablo 3, but the committee is still very reluctant to approve Diablo 3 even with the changes. They really don't like the Auction House, and perhaps Blizzard will make another revision to their approval request.
• They meet every Wednesday and Friday, so everything is still pretty much up in the air. There might be some news by next Monday.
• There doesn't seem to be any concerns about the gameplay or graphics (decisions on those have already been made). It's all about the gambling nature of the game.
• When asked about Diablo 3, a Blizzard spokeswoman confirmed "In principle, we are always committed to a global release". Quite the contrast to what the Forum Managers were telling us, but then again, they were also trying to be as ambiguous as possible.
• And, there's also this nice quote too: "Because every country will receive identical software, the Korean board’s decision is keeping the global game giant in chains."

There are statements of fact in the news article as well as opinions from the internet, so if there is anything incorrect about facts in the news article, there will be a retraction. This is why I like news sites over blogs like Dfans, Incgamers, MMOChamp, etc. :)

Other than that, still no updates on the Bethesda v. Interplay battle either. There's no point in writing about it either, since every other blog has already announced the same thing: there's a settlement but no one knows the details. I can't wait to find out those details!

If you're a regular reader, I apologize for the repetition in advance. Some of it you'll recognize, but there's a lot of new stuff.

The reason I'm doing this is because there's a lot of information scattered throughout the blog, and I wanted to make ONE POST that consolidated everything. So, I'm putting all of the pieces together here to create one comprehensive article of arguments that I can "sticky" to the front page.

The following is supporting evidence why I am fully convinced that the South Korean RMAH problems are the primary reason for the initial (and continued) delay of the Diablo 3 release.

Importance of Korean RMAH

On September 22, Blizzard management rushed to Korea to address sudden issues within the GRB approval process dealing with concerns over the RMAH and gambling.

Immediately the day after (September 23), Mike Morhaime published the “Soon” Was Too Soon -- Diablo III to Arrive in Early 2012 announcement.

This is key. Michael Morhaime, the Chief Executive Officer of Blizzard Entertainment made an unscheduled and rushed visit to Korea because of concerns regarding the RMAH & Gambling aspect of the game. He was also there with Robert Bridenbecker (VP of Online Technologies), Blizzard Korea Directors, and probably many other Senior Managers.

When the CEO of a major corporation gets involved in something, that's because it's extremely important and critical to the business (as well as the future of the business.)

Employees at the Blizzard US office very rarely even see Mike. He gets paid over $750k per year, and doesn't care about little things like rune decisions, polish, or minor bugs. His concerns consist of important and high level business decisions.

He didn't field questions by conference call, he didn't attend via video conference, he didn't get the Directors in Korea to handle it.. he jumped on a plane and traveled for over 15 hours.

So, the GRB delay was very very important to Blizzard. And when the CEO is involved, it's of the highest importance.

Immediately the day after, the release in all other countries was delayed. This was only made available in Korean newspapers, no one knew about this in NA/EU until I had made others aware of it. Unless Mike had jumped on a plane immediately after the press conference, there's a very strong chance that the Global Delay announcement was even made by Mike (remotely) while he was still physically located in South Korea. :)

So, yes. The decision to have the RMAH in the Korean game is EXTREMELY important to Blizzard and it did effect the launch in all other regions.

Battle.net Blogs & Articles

When that "Soon Was Too Soon" article was posted, did you know that this was the only time that Mike had ever published an article himself on the Battle.net front page?

Most articles are prepared well in advance; several days to several weeks. Upcoming announcements, new features, new contests.. all of these are published by "Blizzard Entertainment" and prepared many days ahead of time. They typically wait until certain days, do some last minute checks, and then click "Publish".

This was a very last minute post, made by Mike the CEO himself. Not only was this totally out of character, but so was his posting time: 5:30AM.

Even the "Diableard Challenge" was cancelled, because everything by this point was completely up in the air and they had no idea what the new worldwide release date was going to be now.

We Have Been Given More Time

In this blue post, Blizzard confirms that because of the delay, they now have more time to add new features and services.

..the fact that some changes or features were added only after the announcement of the postponement of the game in 2012.

Having moved the release date, our development team has been available to the additional time they are using is to finish the game, but also to add items that were not able to be included with the old date of issue (or better with the old forecast).

Having more time means having more content.

Unfortunately, there comes a moment when we must draw a sharp line and decide that the game should be released and that some features or changes are not necessary.

Consider this very carefully and use all the powers of logic at your disposal.

The game was delayed. They now have time to add new features, new content, fix bugs, polish the game, adjust runes, balance characters.

Do you see the logic here? The runes, bug fixes or polish did not come BEFORE the delay, nor did they CAUSE the delay. There was "A DELAY", but now they have time to work on the runes, bugs, balancing, and polish. They also have more time to add NEW FEATURES and NEW CONTENT.

This means that it's NOT the runes, bugs, balancing, tweaking, or polish delaying the game. "Something else" delayed the game, but now they have time to work on all of those things.

And if they have so much extra time available to add NEW FEATURES and NEW CONTENT, doesn't that just speak volumes that there was nothing actually holding back the game? This means that the game was practically done, because now they can add NEW stuff. Because things are so open ended with the release date, they have so much extra time available that they can just add new features, services, and content.

If the game was delayed because of game-play issues, they would have been given extra time to correct those issues specifically. That's when they enter "crunch time", and work hard to get rid of those last minor issues. They wouldn't be using that time to add brand new features and content that would add new bugs, new balancing issues, and other new problems. No, they said that because of "THE DELAY", that they now had time to add new stuff. And because they made the distinction, "THE DELAY" has nothing to do with the game or game-play elements itself. That just leaves an external factor (or factors), without actually stating specifically what it is.

This should all be common sense.

Sometimes They're Not Good Sources

The best time to get useful or honest quotes or information from Blizzard is when the source is not paying attention, when they're answering another question (to which you can glean other information from), when they're caught off guard, or when they let something slip accidentally.

This is why a lot of the best or unannounced information comes from live interviews, unedited videos, or posts from Blizzard employees who reside outside of the US. Employees who work at Blizzard HQ are more careful about what they say or release. Those in other countries; not as much. (Where did that gigantic Product Slate, Subscribers, and Financials leak come from? Oh right, China.)

When a source is discussing a particular subject, they're very careful about what they say. They'll review their post, word and re-word it, and be very careful to make sure it's as ambiguous as possible. And when Bashiok is involved, his answers are very specifically ambiguous and open to interpretation. When he types, there's no commitment and no clear confirmation or denial. Just like any good politician. :)

You've seen this sort of ambiguous Blizzard response in the past. For example, in regards to the "rumors" that "Mists of Pandaria" was going to be the name of the next WOW expansion pack, and that the Pandaren were going to be in the game, Tom Chilton (Game Director and Lead Game Designer for World of Warcraft) said that this belief was only speculation and "wildly overhyped." And that, "if you look at traditionally how we've handled that race it's been in those secondary products because we haven't realized it in the world. Most of the time when we do anything panda-related it's going to be a comic book or a figurine or something like that."

Many users and gaming sites took this as a DENIAL that MoP was the next expansion pack or could have possibly involved the Pandaren in any way. Smarter people knew, though, that he was neither confirming nor denying anything. You might as well have just ignored everything he said, because he wasn't telling you anything.

Here is Bashiok's primary RMAH Korea post that he and others frequently link back to:

Thank you for voicing your concerns, Starbird. I realize you and many other people are excited to play the game, and are probably feeling a bit let down that we haven’t yet announced a release date. While you bring up a number of points of speculation, I just want to cut right to it and state that the reason we don’t have a release date yet is because the game isn’t yet where we want it to be in terms of our quality standards. We aren’t holding it back on account of any one piece of the game, or for any other outside factors. While it is indeed playable from beginning to end, we’re still actively working on many individual game elements and the ways that they interact with one another, with a great deal of iterative tweaking, balancing, polishing, adjusting, redesigning, and retesting going on. We’re going to continue beta testing, and before too long that’s going to include a large influx of new invites.

Much of this iteration obviously takes place behind closed doors, so I can sympathize with the concerns about the lack of visible progress, and the sentiment that we should just go ahead and ship the game. Until we’re able to reveal more of the results, I can only assure you that we are indeed working on critical game systems that directly impact the core of the experience.

I also realize a lot of people were hoping for a release date announcement at the VGAs. We’re simply not going to be able to dispel or comment on release date rumors and speculation every time someone expects an announcement. We’ll be announcing a release date when we determine the game is ready, and not holding it back just to line it up with any particular game-industry event.

The bottom line is that development of our games and preparations for release are long and complicated. We’re just as excited to get the final version into your hands as you are to play it, but making sure it lives up to our quality standards will always be the most important factor in that process.

What does he really say here though?

He says,

• that they don't have a release date because it's not ready yet.
• that they're not holding it back on account of only 1 piece of the game or 1 piece of some outside factor.
• that they're actively working on tweaking, balancing, polishing, etc. (But, all of that stuff that have been given extra time to work on since "the delay".)
• that he can only assure you that they're were working on game systems.
• that they'll announce when they're ready.
• and that development time of games is long and complicated.

He doesn't confirm or deny anything; he says nothing. This can't be used as a source of information for anything, other than that they're working on the game still.

He even used a thesaurus for describing "the great deal" of the so many things going on in the development process: "tweaking, balancing, polishing, adjusting, redesigning, and retesting". That's the same thing! Seriously.. look up a thesaurus.. other than "testing", everything he said was the same thing but described differently.

And then there's this post from Bashiok later:

"I don't know what translation you're reading but no where has it been stated the release of the game on a whole is delayed because of a GRB rating. Might it delay the game in Korea? I suppose no one knows, but we still have some time since the game is not finished. We're playing internal builds, the entire game, we'd know if it was. I'd know."

What interests me is that he deleted it shortly after posting it. Read it over.. what is so seriously wrong with the post that he had to delete? Is it abusive or rude? Nope. Is he trolling? Nope.

Perhaps the problem with his post is that it wasn't ambiguous enough. :)

He says,

• Blizzard has not stated anywhere that the global release is delayed because of the GRB rating.
• the global release of the game is NOT DELAYED "ON A WHOLE" because of Korea.
• No one knows if the GRB rating in Korea will delay the game in Korea.
• They still have some time since the game is not finished.
• They're playing internal builds and the "entire game." (Hey, I thought it wasn't finished?)

It's perfectly honest and truthful to say that the SK Ratings issue is not the reason for the delay of the game AS A WHOLE. For example, the SK issues might be the leading reason, might have caused the delay, but it's not the reason for the current delay. Right now, it's 99% of the reason, and 1% of the reason is all of the new bugs and features that they have added since the delay. It's all about wording. There's nothing dishonest or incorrect about what Bashiok is saying at all.

In either scenario though, you can't take it as a confirmation or denial.. it's too ambiguous.

After all, ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS.

And what kind of actions have been taken? The Book of Cain was postponed, even though it was published, done, and ready to ship. Forum posts were deleted (it's the deleted posts that are the most important). New forum pages were created. CEO and managers took an emergency trip to Korea. Every announcement or delay comes right after updates from the GRB. Timing of the delay announcements, and everything else listed in this post.

The Plot Thickens

So, here's a direct link to the original Bashiok post (mentioned above) that was deleted. As you can see, #225 and #227 are there, but #226 is gone.

If you go to the Diablofans Blizztracker, the full original entry is archived there.

But look at D3SANC's entry for Bashiok's post. (Scroll to the very bottom.)

No, you're not losing your mind. Bashiok's post has been heavily edited, with a significant portion of the original post cut out.

The thing is.. this is a deleted post, it's doesn't exist. Why would D3SANC go back and edit it to remove that certain paragraph from the post. The whole thing was deleted, they should have just removed the entire entry so that they're properly mirroring the forums.

I'm not sure what's going on here, so I asked D3SANC for a clarification. Apparently, they answer their emails within a couple minutes or it might take a couple hours at the very most. It's been a couple days now, and still nothing.

It's not unusual for Blizzard to ask fan sites to remove information that they don't want users to know about. But at this point, I have no explanation for why the entry was edited or cut out.. so, I have my suspicions but that's all they are.

Blizzard Wants It To Be A Global Release

If you are committed to a global release, then it has to be released in all countries simultaneously correct? If one country is having problems, then it needs to be delayed for all other countries.

During their Q2 2011 Financial Results in August, Activision Blizzard described Diablo 3 as a "global release". This is wording that has never been used before to describe any of their past games. It was announced publicly and to their shareholders.

They even developed a global version of the game. Back in October 2011, Robert Bridenbecker (VP of Online Technologies) described the game as their first "region free" game. As Robert explained, "When you buy Diablo 3, you're buying Diablo 3." You can play it anywhere in the world, it's not region locked, and players can select any server they want, and any language they want.

This game can be bought in any country and you can play it in any other country you want. When (or if) the Digital Pre-Downloads go up, it's going to be a worldwide global launch whether Blizzard actually wants it to or not. But, of course, it makes perfect sense for Blizzard to launch globally since they're producing a region free game.

In their "Soon is Too Soon" news release, they made a global announcement ("As we're announcing globally today..") In this announcement, they state that they were originally targeting the game for end of 2011 (end of Nov release date). This wasn't a specific country or regional announcement like they've done for WOW, Starcraft, and all previous games, this was a GLOBAL announcement and a global change that all countries needed to be aware of.

In that same announcement, they also stated that "Blizzard will use the additional time to extend the Diablo III closed beta test." Additional time to add more new services and features.. and more stalling to keep players busy. (More on this later.)

Zhydaris of Battle.net EU stated that they are intending on having a global release.

Blizzard Korea officially described Diablo 3 as a "Global Version" in their application for consideration.

Blizzard wants this game to be a global release. It's being developed as a global game, it's being sold as a global game, it's being described as a global game in official documentation, and Blizzard has described their intention to make it a global game. This piece alone, skipping all other supporting evidence, should be enough to show that Blizzard wants the game to launch simultaneously worldwide.

It could have still been launched globally this past November, if they had cut out the RMAH completely from the Korea launch knowing that there would have been issues with their new legislation. Instead, they delayed it, then they missed including RMAH related documentation in their approvals submissions, delayed again, then they offered to remove only the cash-out feature only, and it was delayed yet again. They really want a paid RMAH system within the Korean Diablo release.

* UPDATE

On January 4, an official news source confirmed that Blizzard is committing to a global release (spokesperson from Blizzard was quoted.) They also confirmed that Blizzard is planning on a simultaneous global launch, that it will be a region-free game for the first time in it's history, and because of this the Korean GRB's decision is preventing the launch in other countries. This is from an official news source that is held to journalistic standards.. not an anonymous forum post, not a blog, not a fan/gaming site.

Runes, Bug Fixes and More Layers of Polish

These are apparently the biggest issues holding back the release and what many users are constantly reiterating.

The list seems a awfully light don't you think? THESE are the reasons for the delay? That's it? What doesn't make sense is that the beta was already polished, there were very few bugs (and minor ones at that), and the rune system was ready.

Starcraft 2, on the other hand, was delayed because WOTLK was taking up the majority of the development team's time, Blizzard didn't want it to conflict with the MF2 launch, there were still stability issues (plus bugs & polish just like D3), and because the Battle.net service and the technology was not prepared. It was officially delayed because "essential" and "integral" parts of the game and Battle.net were missing.

However, Diablo has been delayed for several months because they still need to fix their runes, bugs, and add more polish. That must be a LOT of work.. the entire development team must be working on it. Gosh golly.. you know, they might even need to bring in more workers from other departments to help out. And, of course, Blizzard would never launch a game that has bugs in it.. World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2 have never had ANY bugs since launch. Melting videos cards was a "feature."

If they've been polishing the game over the past 5 months, as Bashiok has stated, why is it taking so long.. and where exactly IS this polish? I had thought polish were last minute additions and graphical tweaks to clean everything up. But, they're adding new features and new content.

If this is true that they're applying more layers of polish, it means that retail will be far more polished than the beta. How much do you want to bet it will still look the same?

How about the bugs? When the beta first came out, users were very impressed on how well polished and bug free the game was. Bugs only started happening AFTER Blizzard started adding new features (like Simple ToolTips) which only came AFTER some unknown delay. They were given more time to add new content, new assets, and new features that were all supposed to be added post-retail. So, the bugs you're seeing now are the ones that were supposed to be there a few months after launch. Except, there probably would have been more emphasis on correcting them more quickly. As beta players are seeing, the minor bugs currently in the beta are being fixed very slowly or not being fixed at all. Are they game breaking bugs? Nope. Game frequently crashing? Nope. Minor bugs? Yup. I'm willing to bet too that many of the beta bugs will also be present in retail. The same thing happened with all of their other games.

And finally, how about the big one: runes.

Jay Wilson already said that the Rune system was good enough to ship as is. The team has been experimenting with different rune systems, and Jay said that they're trying about 2-3 different ideas. If they're ready and the dev team likes them, they'll see how the players like them. However, they're just ideas and they are not a deal breaker. Jay said;

"The system is already cool as it is, so if it does work (the new rune system), we'll just leave it as it is."

Jay made it clear that the rune system would not hold back the release. They just have many options available right now, but they like the old system. They would like to test out new things, but most of these changes will be done post-retail just like the WOW talent system. How many iterations and tweaks has the talent tree undergone since launch?

During an October 22 2011 interview with Jay Wilson and David Adams, Jay confirmed that the rune system WILL NOT hold back the game release and that the team working on the runes just has the luxury right now to play around with different versions. At the 6:10 mark, Jay says that runes is not a big thing and not the "final thing" that they're finishing up. What they are finishing up for the release, however, are "mostly the game wide polish, bug fixing, and some technology.. online technology.. things like that." You should watch this portion of the video and see his mannerisms while trying to explain what's holding back the game. :)

On November 29 (last month), even Bashiok wrote that they'll go back to the original "totally awesome" system if they don't like the testing results of their other ideas. (This echoed exactly what Jay Wilson had stated months earlier.)

"We actually have moved on from the previously discussed unattuned system. We've been trying many different ideas out, but we're not quite comfortable enough with any of them yet to invite you in and see what you think.

Let me also say that the old system wasn't broken, per-se, it just had a few issues we thought we could resolve. Runestones are a huge part of Diablo III, and we think it's worth trying out some alternatives and see if we can't improve it. But if all of our experiments fail we can easily go back to the original system, and it will still be totally awesome."

Basically, they scrapped the unattuned system, they're experimenting with other new systems, but the old system is great and it's their primary fallback. The old system is also "totally awesome". Runes are ready, they're not going to hold back the game.

So what's left? Runes are done. There's no more polish needed. Bugs are new, but there's little time spent on them and they're only here now because they were given more time due to some other external delay. If that's the case, then the delay couldn't possibly be related to the bugs, polish, or runes.

More Stalling

(Much of this you can find in earlier posts.)

* Diablo 3 was supposed to be released late November.

* During Blizzcon 2010, Jay Wilson originally expected that the D3 beta would run for "six months" before release but this wasn't the beta you have now. It was going to be at least the first 3 acts.

* During Blizzcon 2009, users were able to play through the full Act 1 and Act 2, Act 3 was revealed, Act 4 was kept as a surprise for release, and in 2010 they were able to play the PVP portion. Based on Blizzard comments at the time, players were expecting that the beta would be Act 1, Act 2 and possibly a portion of Act 3 (since Jay Wilson confirmed that Act 4 would be the smallest Act.) Even Bashiok said in April 2011 that the beta would consist of the first 3 acts: "You’ve actually seen some of the first three Acts already, and we probably won’t be revealing too much more than what we’ve already shown." The last act(s) and additional difficulty levels were going to be "a surprise" saved for the retail.

* In 2011, the beta was shortened to a 2-3 month testing period and just a fraction of Act 1 because they only needed to test servers, network, and the new auction house systems. The plan was to release it before Christmas.

* Now, shouldn't the small beta size also be a major clue as to how much progress was really made to the game? The game was done, it was ready, they didn't need the full game to be tested by users for feedback, and instead they just released a very small tech demo. That's just how complete the game really was.

* On September 22, Blizzard C-Levels rushed to Korea to deal with the fallout of the GRB approval process and their questioning about the gambling aspects of the RMAH.

* On September 23, Blizzard immediately published their "Soon Was Too Soon -- Diablo III to Arrive in Early 2012" announcement. Coincidence? :)

* Right after Blizzcon, even the Book of Cain was suddenly pushed back from it's November 15 release date to an undecided time. This happened even though the Book of Cain was done, published, stocked, and ready to ship. Several copies were also sent out months before release to reviewers. This left many people completely baffled as to why it was pushed back.

* The GRB's "final decision" was about 1 week away. On Nov 21, Rob Pardo tweeted "time to get serious and work hard on Diablo 3" possibly indicating that they were getting close to crunchtime.

* On November 30 (or possibly Nov 29), Blizzard received an update from the GRB that they were still in deliberations and a final decision would probably be made by January.

* Suddenly, there was a huge explosion of Diablo information.

* On November 30, Blizzard announced the official release date (Dec 13) for the Book of Cain following several date changes over the previous months.

* On December 1 (the day after), the Global RMAH testing was announced. Blizzard also started releasing information on items and Artisans and new pages were published. All within a very short period of time, almost as if they were just waiting for weeks for someone to finally click "Publish."

* The "Day In a Life" series was originally supposed to be 3 interviews. After this announcement, the page was redesigned, new content was uploaded, and it was expanded to 5 employee interviews instead of 3.

* On December 5, Blizzard Korea also made an official update on the Korean Battle.net site about the delays of the game and the status updates on rating approvals. They stated that the Diablo 3 release was being held back because of issues with the GRB.

* On December 8, AUS Beta Key contest announced. Contest expires on Dec 31.

* On December 9, Blizzard finally revealed the long predicted "Battle.net Balance" system and that it would be rolled out within a few weeks (ie, 2-3 weeks time).

* On Friday Dec 16, Blizzard received notification from the Korean GRB that more information was needed. The hearing was schedule for Dec 21 for their answer, however it was cancelled and postponed until Blizzard could provide proper data. (They were given 7 days to reply.)

* On Monday Dec 19, this news made front pages of Korean news sites.

* On this same day, a major wave of opt-in beta keys went out. The next day, Blizzard announced a new US-based beta giveaway which overlapped with the last week of Facebook giveaway. Also, the number of keys available didn't match per capita with the AU/NZ beta key contest. It expires Jan 23 2012. (More stalling.)

* On Dec 22, the SK GRB received Blizzard's resubmission for a rating, however they are excluding the "cashing-out" function of the Real Money Auction House this time around. Players will still be charged money, however, but the money will be stored as Battle.net Bucks instead which can only be used for Blizzard goods and services.

* The GRB's next "final decision" is scheduled for Wednesday, January 4 2012.

* On January 4 2012, Jay Wilson tweeted "Asia is not holding us back. You'll know soon enough." The first time a senior manager commented on the SK Release Debate.

* Since polishing is obviously not the hold-up, the only other public item they have announced are runes. Runes should not cause any delays though. They have multiple iterations of the rune system, and I don't think it has anything to do with the how they designed them but rather how they will be used. Because runes are item drops, and their rarity can be controlled, I suspect that the Diablo team might be trying to monetize runes. If there are rare item drops, they can be sold on the RMAH. This makes runes very restricted for the development team and it does not leave them many options for innovation. Because of this problem, there's a very good chance that itemized runes will be removed (ie, they can no longer be sold on the RMAH), and simply changed to skill "level ups" like in World of Warcraft. By using this approach, they can spread out skill level ups from 1-60 but find another way to monetize "runes" such as +skill gear like in Diablo II. I will discuss this topic in another future post, because there are many problems having item-based skills.

* "Final decision" postponed again. They'll be meeting to "finalize" again on Friday, January 6 2012. (Which was postponed again too.)

* On January 5 2012, Bashiok stated that they are not in a polishing stage yet.

It's making sure everything is perfect. We're not really in a strictly polishing phase yet though, although certainly that's true for some areas of the game. Still, we're in the process of working on some rather large game system changes, some of which we'll be sharing shortly before or with the next beta patch.

For several months, Bashiok and other Blizzard employees have been stating that they have been polishing the game, which is the cause of the delay, and that they're in it's final stages. However, now Bashiok has re-clarified that they're in fact, NOT in the polishing stage and that they're adding large game system changes.

* On January 5 2012, Bashiok also confirmed that they're now planning for a release in First Quarter 2012. Previously, they planned on a release at "the end of 2011".

* On January 7 2012, I noticed an explosion of new information, and due to this, I suspected that something must have happened internally with the GRB or Blizzard revised their submission again to remove the RMAH entirely.

* On January 12 2012, that game was approved by the SK Game Ratings Board. It also came with the revelation that Blizzard had submitted a THIRD revision of the game that no one knew about. This third revision removed the RMAH entirely. (The first version had the full RMAH, second version had RMAH only for B.Net Credits, and the third version apparently only has the Gold Auction House.)

* Considering how extremely important the SK RMAH was, prompting visits from C-Level Executives and even revisions to the Ratings Submission, it is highly unusual that Blizzard now wants to remove the RMAH completely. If SK was not a concern and it did not impact other countries, they could have just launched the game in every other geography but without selling it in SK at all. But instead, they removed a critical piece and all signs point towards a global release.

* Also on January 12 2012, Zarhym stated that Jay Wilson will be posting a large status update on the state of the game and beta. It will be posted late in the week (meaning Friday, January 20th) followed by an update to the beta servers.

* On January 13 2012, Bashiok released information about the Korean server that contradicted information provided by The Korean Times and the GRB.

With an NA account you'll be able to play everywhere, but you'll only be able to use the currency-based auction house in NA.

Just for normal play, imagine it like Diablo II. On every region you have access it's a completely separate database, different gold auction house, and you have a different set of 10 characters available. Each region is a separate 'realm' of the game.

We'll have more information about the whole cross-regional play closer to launch.

Sorry, it's a bit confusing to explain even though it's extremely simple and obvious in practice.
Pretty solid, of course nothing is guaranteed.
Yes the whole point is you can change regions in-game.
You're welcome. :)

I'm unaware of all the regional breakdowns. I'd wait for the more info I referenced.

Hrm. Well Korea still has a currency-based auction house, there's just no current cash out functionality. They can buy and sell items and still build up their Battle.net balance to buy Blizzard goods and services from the store.

Deleting my response until I can verify what actually occurred. Maybe I'm incorrect in my understanding of what was submitted for approval.

So, I was right, they have an auction house that uses Battle.net balance, which is separate from the gold auction house. There are some details I'm still fuzzy on because the Korea Battle.net balance works a bit differently from ours.

In any case, it won't be the currency-free option you're looking for.

This thread is broken, IMO. If you have a specific question or topic to discuss please create a new thread for that specific topic. Also! Stop getting so angry.

Thread was locked for several hours, but then the thread was suddenly deleted shortly after.

* On January 19, Jay Wilson's post finally went live to the anticipation of many. Users were led to believe that the post would detail a complete explanation of the major jobs that they have been working on since "The Delay" in September 2010. It was meant to justify why the SK issues had nothing to do with the delay. Instead, they were surprised when they were confronted with a simple bug patch list of minor tweaks that were already completed and ready for the next beta patch. What was supposed to be an explanation of the long delay was instead an update of the minor changes that they had been working on over a few weeks.

* It has been 7 weeks now, and the Battle.net Balance feature has still not rolled out. It was supposed to be rolled out within 2-3 weeks of December 9, 2011. Considering JW's post and the lack of RMAH progress, this leads me to believe that the current delay is quite possibly related to the B.Net Balance / RMAH / PayPal integration. There may even be problems that PayPal is experiencing; for example, they would be the ones facing prosecution and taking the risks if the game is declared illegal gambling (the SK issues may have raised concerns.) This current delay might also have to do with a new D3 version being prepared for South Korea since Cash Trading is no longer permitted. (I have talked about this before, and what to expect if the game goes live but the RMAH is removed.) I'll know more once the game goes live though.

* On January 31, 2012 the new Battle.net Terms of Use (which included the new Diablo 3 and RMAH updates) were finally published for NA & EU. However, the document shows a Last Revised date of December 10, 2011.

* On Monday, Feb 6 it was predicted that there would be a big announcement released, the Battle.net Balance finally launched, PayPal finally integrated allowing purchases and payments, and all of this would logically be accompanied by a Release Date announcement (since Monday, before the Shareholders Meeting was the most logical.) A Release Date announcement was made, just not the kind that everyone was hoping for. Previously, I had stated that if a release date announcement was not made by the Monday, then the chances of a Q1 release quickly diminishes, meaning a Q2 release.

* On Feb 9, Bashiok confirmed that they decided that week to delay to Q2 instead, meaning that a Monday announcement was highly likely. On Feb 18, the week following the Shareholders Meeting, a Blizzard leak confirmed that they already had a Release Date set, meaning that they could have announced it right before the investor's call.

* On Feb 17, it was revealed that the entire game was overhauled because Listing Fees had to be removed from the RMAH. This was a huge financial loss for Blizzard, and the only reason for making this change was because of Illegal Online Gambling concerns. By removing Listing Fees, they removed the player's monetary risk and avoided future legal complications.

* On Feb 18, Blizzard also revealed a major overhaul to the Rune System (which was blamed for the past several months of delays), which was changed due to the major overhaul of the RMAH and complications trying to monetize the items. They are no longer monetizing Runes, and a trend is emerging showing that all of these delays simply relate back to the RMAH and gambling.

* On March 15, Blizzard has finally announced the official Release Date (May 15, 2012). They have also confirmed that the game is indeed a global release (all countries will be able to play it on the same day) and it is a region free game.

Frequently Asked Questions

I'll leave this space open for FAQs. As the game and announcements progress, or if I realize that I missed anything in the post above, I'll update this document.

Q: Even Blizzard's new submission has the RMAH. Why can't they just leave the RMAH completely out of Korea so that it can finally launch?

A: Even though Korea represents a major portion of their sales and RMAH usage (they're in the top 10), it's not just about the money. If Korea does not have the RMAH implemented, it's going to be a logistical and account management nightmare for Blizzard. The game is region free, and Korean players could use the RMAH in other countries. Blizzard would then be supporting illegal gambling (and for minors.) It would be very bad for the company. It's much easier for them, and more lucrative, to wait. Their last resort is not to release D3 in Korea, and therefore make it illegal for users to play the game. That way, Blizzard is not held liable for user's actions, and the government must regulate it's use on their own.

Q: Why doesn't Blizzard just tell everyone what's going on?

A: Are you kidding me? "Hey, this game is being delayed because of one country. We really want the game there, because we make more money and it's easier for us so that we don't need to create a lot of new security systems. You could have been playing this game in November 2011, but this is all about us, not our players." Yeah, that will go over really well.

Q: Will I be a total douchebag if I don't read anything you've written, but then attempt to refute one of your claims and use that as proof that everything here is incorrect?

A: Yes. Only weak and unintelligent individuals will try to take one small part of a massive list of arguments, try to disprove it, and then use that single reference as "proof" that everything else is null and void.

"You misspelled 'their'. How can I take any of this seriously? Since the spelling is wrong, the argument is wrong, and therefore EVERYTHING written is wrong. QED."

Q: Wow, you collected a lot of stuff. It looks like Blizzard employees release a great deal of information about their games and inner-workings that no one knows about in the US. Where can I find this stuff myself?

A: First, go to "http://translate.google.com". Here are some sites to get you started:

http://kr.battle.net
http://eu.battle.net
http://thisisgame.com
http://diablo3.playforum.net
http://www.inven.co.kr

Q: Hey, you missed that really important post where you or someone else discussed X and how it impacted Y. Can you please add it to the list?

A: Sure, just leave a comment with links, sources, proof, etc. If I missed anything, I'll add it to the list.

Q: There are some posts on the EU Battle.net forums from blue that mention a "global launch." What's all that about?

A: No one is supposed to know about that, and blue isn't supposed to be talking about it or mentioning it. A "global launch" for Diablo 3 hasn't been officially announced yet and Blizzard won't be announcing it until they get full approval from Korea. Blue forum posters shouldn't be assuming it will be a global launch, after all. That's the plan, but if it gets rejected, it won't be a simultaneous worldwide launch.