Lately, it seems like there's been a lot of contradiction from Blizzard..

When talking about their release date on February 23, Jay Wilson assured all of their customers that "You’ll know as soon as I know for sure the exact date."

We think you're going to love Diablo III when it's released, and speaking of release plans, you can seriously expect a launch-date announcement from us in the near future. See, I didn’t say “soon,” so I’m not taunting you. ;) You’ll know as soon as I know for sure the exact date.

Only a few weeks later (March 13), he changed it to "well.. I actually know the release date for sure, but I'm not going to tell you now" instead.. oh, by the way.. "I’m not taunting you. ;)"

You'll know as soon as I'm allowed to say. And no, I'm not allowed to say when that is.

It's been made pretty clear over the past couple months that the new Release Date has been known since at least January.

I really don't have any problems with these contradictions though.. I'm just so used to Bashiok that I expect it. It's the anti-transparency, business treachery and concealment of intent that bothers me.

For example, for a very long time Blizzard has been adamant that there will never be a Real Money Auction House available for Hardcore players. They have explained a lot of really good reasons for this decision, such as the unfairness of losing items you paid for with cash being the biggest.

Can Hardcore-mode characters use the currency-based auction house?

No. Hardcore characters will only have the option to buy and sell items together with other Hardcore characters via a separate "Hardcore-only" gold-based auction house; they will not be able to use the currency-based auction house. Hardcore mode is designed as an optional experience for players who enjoy the sense of constant peril that comes with the possibility of permanent death for a character. All of a Hardcore character’s items are forever lost upon that character’s death, so to avoid the risk of a player spending real money on items that could then be permanently lost when the character dies, we decided to prohibit the use of the currency-based auction house in Hardcore mode.

It's also funny to note that by NOT having the HC mode RMAH, it was a little contradictory in itself. They said that the reason for the RMAH was to prevent shady 3rd party sites, so why wouldn't they have made it available in HC mode in the first place? Well, for very good reasons that protect the consumer of course.

This all changed though after the removal of the Listing Fee. Suddenly, their convictions regarding the "difficult decision" made about their non-RMAH HC mode seems to be waning.

Now, a Hardcore RMAH is entirely possible.

If there is a demand for it we'll consider it.

Like I said, though, this kind of contradiction doesn't bother me. What does bother me is that he's saying that the players will make the decision whether it gets implemented or not. This worries me, because they've said this before.

Whenever Blizzard says, "players wanted it", "we didn't want it" or "there's a demand for it", it's actually Blizzard that really wants it. This just makes it a really great way to deflect blame away from themselves and control the positive perception of the company. They're being completely truthful too.. all you need is one or two players out of millions to ask for a feature, and they can honestly and confidently claim that "players wanted it."

It reminds me of commercials where they state that "Doctors Recommend X Toothpaste", when all they needed were two "newly financed" Doctors to simply say, "Yep. Sure." And they didn't even have to be medical Doctors in the first place.

Do you know what else players demanded that Blizzard had nothing to do with?

The Real Money Auction House. Blizzard didn't want that, it's because the players demanded it! im totlly srsly guys.

Oh, and REAL ID. That's right.. players wanted that great feature originally. Players also (for real this time) demanded it's removal, which Blizzard discretely replaced with REAL ID 2.0 when things cooled off.

World of Warcraft Paid Faction Changes too. And being able to create both factions on a single PVP Server. Yep.

The Mists of Pandaria Pokemon Pet Battle System. Diablo 3 Online Only requirement. Mandatory Battle Tags. Also, Diablo 3 Trade Chat.. players really did ask for this, but they gave them an aborted abomination instead so that they could say, "Well, we did give it to them lol."

Even Character Naming Restrictions, then more restrictions, then suddenly the removal of naming restrictions (that benefited Blizzard) were all demanded by the customer apparently.

Sure, some players thought these were great ideas and really did ask for them.. but do you really think that these were what most players wanted? The average player liked the idea of character naming restrictions, a broken chat system, and real name identification? Did everyone forget the uproar when the Cash Auction House was first announced? The RMAH didn't sound like a customer request at all.

"We only did it because players asked for it."

These kind of statements worry me because it means that Blizzard is seriously considering this and it has very little to do with player demand. When Blizzard says "If there's a demand for it", it means that their prepping customers like what they did with the "Item Squish" announcement. And, with the major changes to the items and RMAH due to the removal of the Listing Fee (gambling concerns), I think Blizzard has been seriously considering this in Hardcore mode to further increase revenue. It will be even more profitable in HC mode due to the risk involved in collecting items as well as losing all of your items in death (and thus requiring the purchase of all brand new items.)

Whether it's worth it to Blizzard or not, though, will depend on metrics. What percentage of players prefer Hardcore over Normal mode for example? If it's just a small percentage, it's probably not worth it. But, if there are a large percentage of Hardcore players, then yes; financial gains trump customer woes (which can eventually be soothed anyways.)

tl;dr; fully anticipate Blizzard (and other large gaming companies) to fully exploit the "only if players want it" statement for features that they actually want.

"So, if (or should I say when) runes as an item are removed, expect a very wide variety of +skill item modifiers."

Just an interesting note about this subject. This was not announced in the recent Jay Wilson Rune Changes post, and most players are not even aware of it yet.

However, recent data mining of Patch 13 has revealed that +skills are indeed a new Affix for items.

Ancient Spear Increased by 3-5 (Barbarian only)
Bash Increased by 4-5% (Barbarian only)
Seven-Sided Strike Increased by 3-5 (Monk only)
Sweeping Wind Increased by 4-5% (Monk only)

These are not "skill points" in the classical sense, like in Diablo 2.. but rather smaller (and stacking) modifiers to increase the skill's effect, whatever it might be. For example, increasing damage, duration of the skill, number of targets, total number of projectiles, length or range of the skill, healing effects, etc. So, the number will either be a percentage (damage) or a number (time).

It's sort of their way to still have "itemized runes" that can be sold in the Real Money Auction House. Now, these are just items that come with a mandatory Affix, but consider ultra rare drops (like one-use-only item enchants or unrevealed gems, that can also be sold on the RMAH) that can apply +skill effects to any weapon or armor of your choice.

Even though the Mystic has been removed from the game, expect it to make a re-appearance later in the future. For example, they have enough professions for the retail, so they're cutting out content now to save it up for the next expansion pack rather than dreaming up a new profession. (Blizzard has done this before.) And, with the Mystic might also come low end +skill enchants for any item of your choosing, rather than "Diablo Vanilla" only having the fixed +skills on gear.

For any new Affix they create, it will further increase the vast pool of total items, and therefore increase the total number of successful RMAH sales. Creating more items (even though they're really just the same) will be one of Blizzard's priorities given the new direction of the RMAH. It won't be just limited to weapons or gear; consider aesthetics for yourself or only for your followers, cool glowing or color-changing dyes, companions/pets, many new recipes, and even new gems. If the RMAH is great success, expect new items to start coming through patch updates (even in minor ones) or maybe even a rush of some things I just mentioned that they were saving up for D3 X1.

(Note: None of this has been officially announced yet, and many users on the Battle.net forums don't believe that this is going to happen.)

In a recent "Pach Attack" video, Michael Pachter said that we'll ultimately see the Real Money Auction House expanded to World of Warcraft. Especially if the D3 RMAH is financially successful for Blizzard, which I'm confident it will be.

Mind you, I don't think it will be as financially successful as it could have been with the Listing Fees, but they'll still be making decent coin from the new system. Plus, you can count on Blizzard always finding new methods to encourage RMAH use and to introduce wide varieties of (highly preferable) items that players can sell on the RMAH. For example, new affixes, non-gear based items that improve your in-game experience and cool or rare aesthetic changes (like glowing wings or eyes).

You can also count on new Paid Services, and especially ones that enhance your RMAH experience. For example, a Mobile AH or a "RMAH Preferred User" plan where users pay a monthly fee to get access to better RMAH features, such as selling >10 Active Items (or maybe additional in-game fees for going over the limit).

Some users are very excited about the idea of getting a RMAH in the World of Warcraft. Others however, are completely against it, since the idea of a RMAH in any Blizzard title is considered hypocritical considering their past stance on Real Money Trading.

Diablo 3 will help them with their "acceptance issues" though.

So, I emailed Robert Bridenbecker (VP of Online Technologies) about the possibility of getting a RMAH in World of Warcraft. It was very general question, and in retrospect, I should have been more specific. (I try to keep emails short because it increases the chance of a response.)

Dec 9, 2011

Hi Rob,

What are the chances of getting a Diablo-style Real Money Auction House in World of Warcraft eventually?

I haven't played WoW for a couple years now, but the RMAH is just the kind of feature that would get me back into the game. :)

Dec 9, 2011

Retrofitting something like the RMT AH into an established game like WoW is considerably more challenging than building a game with the AH in mind.

So while it's probably unlikely, we are always evaluating areas that could further engage players. I will pass your thoughts along to the team.

Rob

I had forgotten about the age of World of Warcraft. They have the people to do it, but integrating a RMAH into WOW would be a very challenging process and it would be like bringing a new F2P Marketplace model into Asheron's Call. A lot of work and completely possible.. but is it worth the expense and time? Would they make enough money back to make the project worthwhile?

After some more thought on the subject, I was thinking that a RMAH might not even be a good idea for WOW after all.

So, I guess my question was a little premature. What I should have asked was if there was a way to integrate the RMAH but in a different form?

If you think about it, even if players really liked the idea, a RMAH really isn't well suited for WOW.

Due to the fees associated with selling items (especially with their inability to use Listing Fees), the RMAH is designed for high level items. But, all of the high level items in WOW are BOP and Blizzard already has the entire game designed around Dungeons, Raids, and Fixed Loot Tables. Putting high level items on the AH would destroy Dungeons & Raids, wasting all of their content (and work), and make users bore more quickly. They need to constantly consume content, and Blizzard has been working to slow down that process to keep players engaged. So however the RMAH is designed, it can't be around items. (Something to consider for their Next Gen MMO.)

So, I had a better idea.

What if the WOW Armory also acted as a character sales market? This would allow sales of items, gold, and characters simultaneously.

Players could put their individual characters up for sale (or as an auction) for a fixed fee. Maybe even a "Make an Offer" feature for players who would like an account from someone who isn't selling their account. :)

Blizzard could collect a fixed fee of $25-$40 per sale. And, characters might typically sell for $60-500 depending on their level, gold or items.

Battle.net already has Paid Character Transfers, so this is just an enhanced version of the service. It's easy to integrate, eliminates a lot of WOW development time (web development work instead of in-game), and it's a RMT solution that works well to solve for the BOP item problem. It also allows for gold trading, and Blizzard can control the amount of gold that is being transferred through usual restrictions (like what they have already: maximum gold, level, guild removal, etc.)

Here's the follow-up email I sent to Rob, along with his response which I just received today:

Feb 15, 2012

It's me again. :)

I promise not to do this too often (if ever again), because I know you're a very busy person and I want to keep your inbox as clear as possible. So, I'll keep this as short as possible.

I realized that a RMT AH for WOW might not be a good idea after all due to the nature of weapons and gear being BOP. All of the high level items can't be sold on a RMT AH, like what can be done in D3.

Given the in-game technical challenges, I have a better solution.

What about using the Armory as a Character Sales Market? This way, you're killing two birds with one stone.

- Armory Character Page can have a Buy/Sell/Bid option. Even a "Make Offer" if the account isn't for sale.
- No RMT specifically for items or gold is needed in-game or out. These come with the player and are included in the price.
- Character is locked for 24 hours during the sale process. Total on-hand gold is visible to potential buyers (which is technically already visible through achievements).
- Systems are already in place for Character Transfers. Easier to integrate by the web development team.
- This new service can charge $25 like a typical Paid Character Transfer, while lowering normal Paid Transfers (owner to owner for $10-15.)

The benefit of doing it this way is that it's much easier on the team, can be deployed much more quickly (if the D3 RMAH is deemed a success), it will kill the blackmarket power leveling services (as well as item/gold sales), it's a much better and secure process, and by lowering service costs and introducing this new service it can bring in more players (e.g. transferring players to family members or friends.)

A new system like this can have several positive side effects for Blizzard, not only in further engaging players, but also putting a major bottleneck on blackmarket sales and with that, a cascade of other side-effects like reducing botting, power leveling and spamming. Meaning, less customer support and GM expenses.

Feb 21, 2012

We're always looking at new ways to engage the player base and concepts like this are some of the exciting reasons why introducing the auction house and the Armory keep us loving our jobs. Thanks for continuing to think of fun and new exciting things, as well as ways that, as a player, you'd like to see us extend our worlds.

Rob

I really hope they seriously consider this approach.

It's impossible to create a RMAH for items, but selling gold and/or selling characters is a very viable possibility.

Restrictive enough to discourage certain players or groups, but open enough so that most players could engage in it if they want. It opens up the possibility of getting family and friends to jump right into the game with you, if they wanted to skip the long grinding process (characters can be given to friends as gifts for example.)

It would also destroy the WOW blackmarket, giving players a safe way to exchange gold, items, or "power level" characters. It will eliminate sites that sell gold, and stop spamming. Botters, of course, will increase in number so that high level accounts can be sold.. but that's the beauty of this new system; Blizzard can allow certain characters or accounts to be eligible, and not others. For example, they need to be a certain level first, they're restricted on the amount of gold they can carry, or they need to first wait a certain amount of time before they're eligible (even if a botter power leveled a new character, they still need to wait 90 days to sell it.) Power leveling groups won't take this risk, because they would have to sit on a idle account, and there's a very good chance it will be banned once the account is investigated (Blizzard has more time to investigate and more illegitimate behavior patterns to look for.)

Even if Blizzard were to create some kind of item-based RMAH, it would still be years away. They need to see the financial results of the Diablo 3 auction house, and long term advantages/disadvantages to decide whether it's worth the investment or not. It's something that would come with a new expansion pack, and they definitely wouldn't have it planned right now for Mists of Pandaria. Meaning, that the next expansion pack is more likely.. and you're looking at a 2-3 year wait at the very least.

Changing all items to BOE, though, would be very bad for the entire game dynamic, and because of the technical challenges, it's highly unlikely that they'll create a RMAH for high-end gear. Besides the Armory Character Market, however, Blizzard could alternatively sell Conquest or Valor points (or some other method where cash can be exchanged for high end items) to players. But, then Blizzard would be selling directly to the players and printing the money themselves.. something that they wouldn't do. It would have to be a "player-driven economy" so that they're not blamed for exploiting the users.

As promised, my thoughts on the recent RMAH changes.

There were 3 main changes in yesterday's announcement; the listing fee was removed, transaction and minimum listing price were increased, and users are now limited to 10 active auctions.

Even though these are just changes within the beta, it doesn't mean they're limited to the beta. Everything they're testing in the beta is intended for the retail, and Kaivax did say, after all, that the changes were being done to "remove risk" for the user (and there are no risks using Beta Bucks.) He's talking about real money risk.

Currencies

"Beta Bucks" are the standard testing currency in the beta, but I will be using American Dollars. Since the testing is being done by the US-based Blizzard finance and development teams, you can assume that when the announcement is finally made, their choice of USD$ fees will be similar, if not the same, as the Beta Bucks. You can also assume a standard conversion rate into your own region.. for example, a $1.25 transaction fee in the US will be £0.80 fee in the UK.

Listing Fee Removal

As discussed previously, the Listing Fee was a major revenue generator for Blizzard. More so than successful sales and their transaction fees.

The only reason for it's removal would have had to have been something very risky or negative for the company. Because of the monetary risk involved with the Listing Fee, and the high probabilities of lost sales (which Blizzard would have confirmed over the past few months of RMAH testing), the RMAH became a form of illegal gambling. Rather than risking the chance of legal prosecution, they have simply removed the Listing Fee and are taking the financial loss.

It was a great idea in theory, and all of those non-refundable listing fees would have generated them a ton of profit. However, players are now at no risk of losing money and Blizzard can only profit from successful sales.

In order to make up for this loss of revenue, they increased their fees/charges and they brainstormed new approaches to guarantee Successful Sales; one being the 10 active item limit.

Transaction Fee & Minimum Listing Fee

Blizzard needs to bump up these numbers due to the major loss of revenue associated with removing the Listing Fee. This shows you just how critically important the Listing Fee was, and the very hard decision to remove it.

Also.. as you've noticed on the forums, these changes don't encourage players to use the RMAH more, in fact, it discourages them from using the RMAH. So, the changes were made not for the players, but rather the company.

The Minimum Listing price has been increased from $1.00 to $1.50. And, the Transaction Fee has been increased from $0.65 to $1.25. This is in lieu of $0.15 non-refundable Listing Fees.

Their choice of Transaction Fees might also be indicative of what they were expecting from the old Listing Fees. 4 x $0.15 (Listing Fee) = $1.25. They were expecting Listing Fees to generate at least four times the number of successful auctions (a total $0.60 vs $0.65 profit). In theory, it was probably even double that number or more. So, for every successful auction, there might have been at least 8 failed auctions (where Blizzard was hoping to make most of their revenue from.)

As for the Minimum Listing change, it was just a side effect of the Transaction Fee change. If players tried to sell an item for $1.00, they would be charged $1.25 for a successful sale, meaning that they would lose $0.25. :)

10 Active Auctions Only

This is indeed the most interesting of all of the changes.

They're also making the same change to the Gold Auction House. Blizzard explains that the reason for this change is:

Because gold can be sold on the currency-based auction house, we need to ensure there are limitations on the gold auction house as well; otherwise, a player might be tempted to sell everything for gold and then sell that gold on the currency-based auction house, which isn’t supportive of the kind of thriving item-driven market we’re trying to foster.

This explanation makes very little sense however. If there's a 10-item limit, how can they "sell everything for gold" so quickly? The only way to do this is if they significantly reduce their sales price. And even if they could sell all of their items (for a cheap price), they're still not going to have enough gold to sell on the RMAH. Players need to build up gold over time and set aside a large chunk to sell. Players will be able to sell items much faster than gold, and they won't be selling gold in tiny amounts at a time.

It's sort of strange that they had to explain their reasonings for the change in the first place, and even then, it was a poor explanation. So, there must be another reason that they don't want players to know about.

Consider the effect it's going to have:

• The total number of items on the Auction House will be greatly reduced.

• Having less items on both Auction Houses guarantees more success and less conflict.

• By reducing the amount of active listings available, it means that each player will be far more careful about what they post. If a player is about to post an item for sale, they'll see if several are up already. If there's too much competition, they'll just post an item that has no competition.

• When players are limited to the number of items they can sell, there's no overlap of the same items, therefore no competition, and therefore increased chance of success for each sale.

• When items are NOT successfully sold, they will sit and idle. That time represents lost revenue for Blizzard. And, because there will be very little competition, Blizzard might not even have to make changes to auction duration (e.g. making them really short, like maximum 12 hour auctions, to rush players.) Of course, they might do some experimentations with this or in other areas.

• For example, a D3 power seller might sell up to 100+ items per day. Under the old system, Blizzard would have profited greatly from all of the lost sales, cancellations, and undercuts. Under the new system, they don't benefit at all.. in fact, they lose even more money because hundreds of items will be sitting idle and no transactions will be taking place.

• Therefore, it's in their best interest to ensure that every item sells. Before, they didn't care because they really only cared about the lost sales.

So, Blizzard now has a method to increase successful sales rates for their customers which in turn gives them more profit. It benefits them, but also gives them the excuse to claim how it benefits the players ("You have a better chance of selling your item now, and there's no risk!"). It's a win-win situation.

But, now they need to find a way to increase the overall QUANTITY of successful sales. This means more items. And, the fastest way to get more items are new attributes and affixes.

Because Blizzard wants players transacting as quickly as possible, and players will not be competing with each other, they need more potential items that can be sold on the auction house.

If you add a single new affix to items (and when I say items, I mean weapons, armor, potions, etc), it exponentially increases the total number of items. Blizzard doesn't even need to create new items or design new graphics, they just need to create a new affix, and it will generate 100,000 more potential items.

Variation of items is extremely important to Blizzard, especially if they're removing the Rune system, which was going to be another item that could be sold on the RMAH. With the removal of the "sellable skill item" and the Listing Fees, there will be a lot more emphasis of varying up items.. more modifiers, effects, affixes, attributes, whatever.

Most players will think it's very cool, but they won't know the reasons why. When the rune system is removed, the addition of a new item affix makes the most sense. Something that effects skills differently (changes the damage, charges, unique appearance, costs or duration of skills) would widely vary up potential item combinations and class builds, exponentially increasing the total number of items that could be sold on the Auction House. So, if (or should I say when) runes as an item are removed, expect a very wide variety of +skill item modifiers.

.. I am still just a rat in a cage

While all of this is happening (e.g. the different types of items, the 10 active item limitation, etc.), Blizzard will be hard at work analyzing all of these metrics and monitoring your behavior. They have a whole team of psychologists dedicated to this.

If they were to make a slight adjustment, say to the AH Active Item quantity, and change it from 10 to 11 active items, they'll immediately see the real time cascading effect that this has. Making that slight change will have a chain reaction causing different metrics in customer satisfaction, total successful sales, user play time, game cancellations, auction house utilization time, number of posts, and ultimately Blizzard profit. The number of metrics and connections that they will be monitoring will be terrifying, and even I can't comprehend the types of variables and statistics that will be available to them.

They need to do this to find the perfect balance that generates the best possible revenue for the company.

Even stacking of items (stacks that are sold on the AH) will be strategically designed and monitored. They might find better sales rates by lowering or increasing the total stack size, for example.

So, fully expect a lot of experiments to happen under the guise of a reward. They'll throw cheese at you, like "This weekend you get 20 active items because we love you so much!". This allows them to experiment, watch player reactions, and see if they can generate more revenue.

In retrospect, I suppose it should have said Daeity "Runes" Everything instead. :)

You know, it's funny.. I was just in the midst of preparing a post about the non-refundable listing fees and how Blizzard would probably play with different free listings per week (I knew that 3 wasn't going to cut it, but I figured they might experiment with 5 or 10 for various reasons). There's no point in discussing those reasons now, since I've had to scrap everything.

Blizzard just announced a MASSIVE change to the RMAH system. They've finally wised up and have removed the Listing Fee!

As you know, for several months, I've been saying that the existence of the Listing Fee turns the RMAH into a gambling metagame, but the removal of the Listing Fee would make item selling risk free and thus remove the main gambling aspect from the RMAH. Blizzard echoed the same: "This has the main advantage of allowing players to try to sell their items risk-free."

Here's the full posting in all it's glory:

In the near future, we'll be implementing several changes to the posting limits and fees related to the beta version of the Diablo III auction house. Here’s a quick summary of what’s in store:

* Listing fee is being removed.
* Transaction fee is being increased to 1.25 Beta Bucks.
* Minimum listing price is being raised to 1.50 Beta Bucks.
* You will be limited to 10 active auctions per auction house.

With the removal of the listing fee, players will no longer need to worry about whether they’re going to run out of free listings for the week. In addition, introducing a limit on the number of active auctions means players won’t feel as though they should be trying to sell everything they find, potentially flooding the auction house with unwanted items. Under this new system, players will only pay an auction house fee if and when an item actually sells. This has the main advantage of allowing players to try to sell their items risk-free. In addition, because the transaction fee is already baked into the price when an item is listed (as part of the minimum listing price), it’s no longer possible to be in a situation where you don’t have enough Battle.net Balance to list an item, forcing you to have to charge up your Balance just to attempt a sale. We think this will be a much cleaner process for selling items and will ultimately lead to a better experience when using the currency-based auction house.

This new active-auction limit will also apply to the gold-based auction house. Because gold can be sold on the currency-based auction house, we need to ensure there are limitations on the gold auction house as well; otherwise, a player might be tempted to sell everything for gold and then sell that gold on the currency-based auction house, which isn’t supportive of the kind of thriving item-driven market we’re trying to foster. In addition, for the first time in the beta test, we're planning to have both the gold- and currency-based auction houses active at the same time when these changes go live. Of course, one of our main goals in making these changes to the beta is to test how they’ll work out, and we look forward to hearing your feedback once you have a chance to try them.

The average user won't recognize the importance of this strategic move. The Listing Fee for Blizzard was really important and a huge financial decision. The decision to remove it was equally critical. The decision to remove it would be something that they have been discussing and legally researching for weeks or months.

Blizzard would have made more money (a killing) from the lost sales then they ever could from successful sales. Billions of transactions.. and they would have profited every time an item was undercut or unsold. The number of successful sales will always be vastly smaller than the amount of unsold items.

You really have to wonder why they removed this, considering it's vast importance. The only explanation Kaivax had to give was that it "removed the risk" for the players. But, financially, this was a bad move for Blizzard, meaning that there had to have been other reasons that could offset "the bad." This wasn't a light decision in any way, and the only possible reason Blizzard had for making these changes was because of the gambling nature and potential legal exposure.

In my discussions with various organizations voicing my concerns about gambling within Diablo, some of them mentioned that they would be following up with Blizzard with questions.

We have all suspected that the long delays might have had something to do with the Battle.net Balance integration or the RMAH. Perhaps, the development and finance teams have been in long discussions with their internal legal departments? And now, a major change in policy is needed to avoid future legal entanglements.

I think we might finally have some answers to their long delays. And, this also opens up the opportunity to finally get the RMAH re-instated in South Korea.

This has been a huge success; it's a change I have been advocating for a long time now. I'm really excited and pleased about this announcement. :)

“Do you know the difference between a hustler and a good con-man? A hustler has to get out of town as quickly as he can. But, a good con-man? He doesn't have to leave until he wants to.”
- James Woods

In the past, I've talked about how the RMAH was designed so that only high level (or should I say, the most valuable) items will be sold on it. Even Blizzard is aware of this, and they want the most valuable items only sold on the RMAH. Even if they're not directly sold by a player, it will end up on the RMAH indirectly by another player who re-sells it.

In the end, all of the best stuff will be on there.

The other day, one of our readers asked a question about the "forced" usage of the RMAH so I wanted to expand on this. My comment ended up being too long, so I just decided to answer the question as a full post:

Don't you think that making the RMAH mandatory would alienate a big chunk of their playerbase?"

If they make inferno so hard that you can't beat it without the best gear possible from inferno(which will only be available on the RMAH), I see a few problems coming up:

-How are people supposed to get inferno gear if they can't beat inferno without said inferno gear? (D3 endgame multiplayer only? o_O)
-If they are forced to buy stuff from the RMAH to progress in inferno, I can see a lot of player simply not bothering with it, just quitting. I don't think Blizzard want that.
-There will be a lot of rage against the RMAH as soon as people are forced to use it. I'm pretty sure a lot of Blizzard's fans are against the idea of "pay to win".

The way I see it: buying stuff on the RMAH will be a way to speed up your character progression. Yes, inferno will be super hard, but there's no way Blizzard is going to force you to buy stuff to progress. That would be a horrible way to promote their new and controversial business model. (D3 isn't F2P, the idea that you'd NEED to spend more money than the initial purchase price in order to beat it feels wrong).

I don't think a "mandatory" RMAH will alienate the playerbase, because they won't even know they're being alienated in the first place. :)

Perception Management

The financial motivations of a company are not a subject that most gamers care to discuss, let alone even want to be aware of. They just want to play the video game, but the game ends up playing them too.

I think what will happen is that most players will actually turn around and THANK Blizzard for creating such a difficult experience. :)

They'll never make the connection between the Inferno difficulty level (and other difficulty level "steps" to get to Hell) and the RMAH.

(Unfortunately, I have to start tagging the blog URL to any pic I throw together. Flux from Incgamers likes to borrow images from this blog for his own posts without crediting the source.)

Players won't get angry at Blizzard for the "mandatory" RMAH because Blizzard is an expert at perception management. And this is what it all comes down to: perception. It won't be a problem for Blizzard if they're not perceived as the problem. So, where is the real problem and who can Blizzard redirect anger and frustration?

Blizzard has kept emphasizing that the Real Money Auction House is a completely player-driven economy, it's managed by the players, and that they have no control over it. They have also said that the RMAH is "COMPLETELY OPTIONAL." Blizzard is not forcing you to use it at all. If players just happen to put items up on the RMAH, Blizzard can't be held responsible for it.. because they promised they would be "hands off."

This Is Unfair!

In situations where players complain on the public forums about Inferno or Hell being too difficult, and how they're "forced" to use the RMAH (because it's the only place with the best gear), I suspect that the following will happen:

• Blizzard CM's will rush to address the concern.. by correcting the gamer for being wrong. They'll be told that the RMAH is "completely optional" and that they're not being forced in anyway to use it.

• The Blizzard CMs will tell them that they can just buy whatever they want from the Gold Auction House. If they can't find what they're looking for, it's just a "coincidence" and they probably checked the Gold AH at the wrong time. Throughout all of this, they'll feign ignorance to the fact that the best items can only be found on the RMAH.

• Blizzard CMs will say that they don't have to buy anything at all, and they just need to farm Nightmare or Hell to get the items they want.. just like their other games. "It will be just like WoW where you need to farm bosses to get the gear you want."

• The blue army will also rush to the aid of the Blizzard CMs and correct the complainer on the forums as well. (Some will actually be Blizzard employees under the guise of regular players.) Posts will be edited or deleted, all to manage perception.

• Blizzard forums will be full of customers and fanboys praising Blizzard for making the Inferno level so difficult, and how they did an excellent job finally making a challenging difficulty level for the players. Gamers who use the RMAH, and then complain about it, will be chastised for being lazy and taking the easy path. Or, they will be called "spoiled rich kids" or impatient for trying to rush the game when they should have been farming "like everyone else." Another common one will be, "Why are you complaining? It's a subscription fee game! It's just a little bit of money, and Blizzard needs it to keep the lights on."

You'll see some contradictory behavior. On one hand, Blizzard will encourage use of the RMAH, but on the other hand, they'll publicly look down upon "Pay To Win" players. :)

The Average User

Above, I just talked about users who complain, but that's a small minority.

On average, most players who use the RMAH will either feel guilty about it, or more likely, they'll think they're cheating the system and gaining an advantage over other players. In either case, these players won't say anything or complain on the forums.. just the way Blizzard likes it.

The problem is that these players won't know they're being "forced" to buy from the RMAH. They'll think that it's their own decision.

It's human nature to be easily influenced and believe that we came to a decision on our own, especially when a game developer's professional marketing and team of psychologists are constantly pounding an idea into our heads. Sometimes it is our own conscious decision, but that's only when we're fully aware of all of the facts and it's a well informed decision.

In some cases, the decision to buy from the RMAH will be because they're impatient and they want to skip ahead to get to the end-game with their friends. (The same thing that happens countless times in WOW and D2.) Or, this might just be their belief when they realize how difficult it is to get properly geared.

These players also don't want to tell anyone they bought from the RMAH so that they won't be labelled as a pariah (even though everyone else does it, and they also never admit to it.)

Forced, but not forced..

"It will be just like WoW where you need to farm bosses to get the gear you want."

But, there's a really big problem with this. You have two options to gear up for Inferno: you can farm Hell, or use the "optional" RMAH.

Is Hell really an option though? Players keep forgetting that Diablo 3 does not have any loot tables. You can't farm specific bosses or mobs for items you need, no matter what you kill, your loot is completely random.

You could farm Hell for years without ever getting the proper gear, and in the absence of free trading, it's a nearly impossible task. And, consider this for casual players!

Even the crafting system for gear will still function the same as regular item farming because you can't craft an item without the Rare Blacksmith Plan drop first. These plans will be sold on the RMAH, just like other rare items or weapons. Besides the random chance in getting the recipe, consider also that crafting the gear is completely random as well. Each time you craft a weapon, it will have random properties and modifiers, and each crafting attempt requires a large influx of Inferno level salvage and Rare Crafting Materials. And even the salvaged materials are completely random! You're back to the same problem of receiving items that you don't need. And, you're still dependent on farming Inferno for all of these materials and recipes, but you can't farm Inferno until you get the proper gear.

Given the number of items, item modifiers, and affixes, there will be billions (if not trillions) of combinations of items in the game. Because of this massive pool of items (Blizzard has stated it's an "item-centric game"), Blizzard is going to be praised for providing so many options for us. As we farm Hell, it's going to appear awesome.. "look at all of these items that are dropping! Wow!".. until the player realizes that they're not actually getting the gear they really need. These useless items (for that player) will actually end up the Auction Houses, and ultimately the RMAH in one form or another, so that another player, who actually needs it, can buy it.

Because of the amount of loot and random generators in the game, the chances of getting the right combination of items are next to impossible.. without using the RMAH. As a Demon Hunter on your own, you might just keep getting hundreds of "of the Owl" crossbows and wands.

The sheer amount of loot will blind you to the truth. You'll have a thousand spoons, but all you need is a knife.

You will be told, though, that you just need to farm Hell for the right items but you have the "optional" RMAH. You're not being forced to do anything you want.

When you consider this, it isn't just a "Pay 2 Win" problem any more. For most players, the RMAH will be needed for actual player advancement, and you can't go any further in the game without the right gear. You need to farm for the right gear, but the only epic boss in Diablo 3 with a loot table is the Real Money Auction House.. it's easy to beat, you just throw a lot of cash at it.

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.

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.

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.