The new rune & skill system is supposed to be announced this weekend.

There's some very strong evidence now that the runes won't be sellable items anymore too. I had touched on this subject before, back in January ("Selling Skills") and then again in early February. I had thought I made a large post all about "monetizing skills" through the rune system, but it must be sitting as a draft somewhere and I just never published it.

So, I figured I would briefly get this out in the open before the big day on Saturday or Sunday. :)

Other than the RMAH and gambling related issues, and a possible B.Net Balance/PayPal integration delay, I believe that there's been an internal "fight" going on regarding the rune system. I think that the D3 development team was told to monetize as many things in the game as possible, especially the rune system because of how valuable skill upgrades were. Because of this restriction, it choked their creativity and they couldn't design the rune system the way they wanted. There was a breaking point of course.. if they couldn't pull it off, then they would have to go back to their basic rune concepts (e.g. a simple skill level up system.)

With the stash size changes, and the recent 10 active item limitation to both Auction Houses, there's a very good probability now that the runes are no longer items, but rather skills that level up as you approach 60.

Previously, there was a dead zone after level 30 which didn't really encourage players to advance. In this new "rune" system, the skill upgrades unlock all the way to level 60 now, so that players will have milestones and rewards to look forwards to. (The old system was not very rewarding and pushed RMAH rune sales instead as the "leveling" mechanism.)

It's something to look forwards to this weekend and it's another big change that I will be very pleased with.

I also have another post planned that discusses why they have a 10 item active limit now. It also relates really well to the old "rare drop" rune system. If you've read earlier comments, though, I might have spoiled it for you already. :)

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. :)

Another long comment turning into a post..

So, yesterday I was talking about creating a new website that praises Blizzard, something that could easily become an "Authorized Fansite". A reader mentioned a Brazil fansite that already did something like this and the administrator became a CM.

Everything on the site was taken directly from the Blizzard site and simply translated. Other than that, the only other bells and whistles were links to external sites and a basic forum. It ended up being a very popular site in Brazil.

Much like D3Sanc, there's a good lesson to be learned from that site. You can have a popular site (that Blizzard approves) simply by re-posting and translating. If you can translate well enough, and there aren't any other large fansites specifically for that language, you could make one yourself and just re-post from Blizzard and other Authorized Fansites. You don't even need to live in the region, you only need the translation skills.

The primary translations that Blizzard is looking for are Spanish (español and castellano), Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, German, and French. Each of these already have a large fansite, but some regions don't really have any competition. The other thing is to keep your eyes on are upcoming translations (like what they did with Brazil recently).. it's something you would want to jump on quickly.

The thing is, too, is that this was just a WoW specific fansite. It got me thinking.. I wonder how successful a simplified universal language site that covers all Blizzard games would do.

It's something that wouldn't require external translation apps (like Babel or Google Translate) since the average user isn't even aware of them. Instead, you would convert all of Blizzard's posts into a more simplified version first, and then translate it.

• Take all of Blizzard's posts, cut out the filler, dumb it down, and just deliver the message in a very simplified manner.

• Convert it into a style that's extremely friendly with translator apps.

• Once you have the simplified version, use your own tools to translate it into as many different languages as possible, and post that on the front page.

• Re-post all of Blizzard's official announcements, their blue forum posts, and Twitter feeds (or more specifically, just the important ones.) Do this for all 3 franchises.

• When the text is simplified, you know it's something that can be easily translated even if you don't have the skill to properly translate it yourself.

In the end, each message would be very short and really just deliver the meat of every message.. but in most languages. (Sort of like a multilingual Blizzard Twitter site.)

Given that we have some many readers here from multiple backgrounds, is this at all possible? Or would dumbing down something be taken as an insult, or not be of any interest?

Take the Battle.tag announcement as an example.

It's a pretty hefty post, but what if you were to dumb it down into something like this:

Blizzard announces new BattleTag service. It is a nickname what will identify you in all Battle.net games and the forums. It is similar to Real ID. It provides a new way to manage your profile, chat with friends, and form groups. You can reserve a BattleTag name now.

It will be put into the next Diablo 3 beta patch. In the future it will be put into other Blizzard games like World of Warcraft and Starcraft.

More details will be released in several weeks.

And then you convert THAT into multiple translations. There would also be linking of course, but I could see a translation problem with special words (like BattleTag) or names (like if you were describing D3 skill names.)

Do you think a site could get away with something like this? It's almost like a BlizzardKids.com website, but available in all languages. Changing everything Blizzard says into an easily readable and straight-to-the-point format? And because of this, it makes it much easier to translate into other languages with little difficulty.

To test this out, take the example I created above, and use Google translate to convert it into a non-English translation and see how it looks.