This is a continuation of the RMT discussion, but on the subject of botting.
Remember that the decision to implement RMT into Diablo 3 was not an easy one. Blizzard, not Activision, makes these decisions and they're not made lightly. They're thoroughly researched, well thought out, considered, and all angles investigated.
EVP Rob Pardo said that they were "thinking about the trading game for a while" and one of the reasons for doing this was because of the changing landscape of games, the different business models, and it "benefits the players, provides more entertainment, is more fun".
So, you can assume that Blizzard already knows the following;
* In black marketing trading, the two traders are known to each other. The trade is made knowingly, meaning that both accounts are susceptible to banning.
* The Cash Auction House is anonymous.
* If a player buys a new character on the CAH that was botted, they have plausible deniability. Meaning that the receiver of the botted character is free of disciplinary action.
* If a player buys an item gained through exploitation, the same. (Item duping, speed hacking, and teleporting will happen.)
* These are all immediate and final sales. The innocent receiver cannot be banned, only the guilty seller.
Under the old system, buyers and sellers alike work through blackmarket websites and there are systems in place to monitor shady dealings like transferring ownership of B.NET accounts.
Under the new system, there is only a monitoring system for catching the guilty seller. A cheater could sell 40 accounts before they get caught, but Blizzard can't just reclaim those accounts since most of them could have been in use for several months after purchase. The same is true for duped items or loot gained through exploitation.. several days or weeks after the sale, Blizzard can't just repossess them or rollback the account to weeks past. It wouldn't be fair.
Repossession or rollbacks of ill-gotten gains could only happen fairly if it happens within hours or a couple days at most. And that's after a full investigation is completed.
Blizzard would know all of this.. ie, that people will be "legitimately" playing botted-accounts or using items gained through exploitation.
So really, this is a method of almost legitimizing botting. :) Sales are immediate and final, and the buyer of the botted account or exploited gold can't be punished. It's a long process before the seller is caught, so the legit gold selling system and enforced anonymity permits this to happen and Blizzard should know this.
Not only that, but the new Auction House system makes botting much easier. In World of Warcraft, botters would need to travel back to cities to sell items or manually list on the Auction House. This is no longer the case. Players can now open the auction house interface from anywhere in the game to sell items. That is a huge advantage for botters.. I can't even begin to describe how amazingly great this is for botters and farmers. So far, things are getting much easier for botting and not more difficult.
On a side note, I've seen that a lot of people are defending the implementation of RMT by saying that "it's already happened." They forget, though, that it was a blackmarket and there's a ton of high risk involved from both the seller and Blizzard. Not only that, but it was only used by a small percentage of players. It's like going from 5% of subscribers on the blackmarket to 80% of subscribers in the new legit system. There's no comparison here, and you can't say "well, it's already been happening and players pay to win already.."
Personally speaking, I'm not for or against RMT officially, I'm just detailing what's happening and what will happen. I'll be playing the RMT system though for entertainment purposes.. I can see the negatives and positives, and I'll just personally weigh accordingly as I experiment with it.
Internet first! Well, it's not anything to really brag about since there aren't actually any real Diablo 3 gold guides out there yet (it's all just simple guesswork and guides on what might make money.. like "farm mobs"). :)
This however is a cool approach that not many people know about or even consider as a gold making technique but it works.
And, the strategy is sheer elegance in its simplicity; character name auctions!
* People will be playing this game for years to come, so it's vital to get a great name as soon as possible.
* The regional servers allow you to create 10 Hero names. I would recommend that you create one for yourself and 9 others for selling purposes. Don't waste your time playing the game right away, just try to reserve 9 of the best names you can.
* Even better if you have multiple accounts.
* Remember that these regional servers are not like WoW. In WoW, you're competing with 40-60,000 other players for names per realm and it's possible to have the same name on multiple realms. In Diablo 3, it's one server for potentially millions of players. Character names will be an extremely rare commodity.
* So far, Blizzard has not announced a new ID based naming convention. For example; Diablo3_Char_Name.AccountID. If this was the case, you'd probably see a half-million Legolas's running around.
* It's more likely you'll see a lot of xXxDestroy3rxXx naming conventions.
You could try and sell these names right away, but I would recommend holding onto them until the naming pool dries up and their value increases.
The new Cash Auction House is region wide, meaning that your Character Auction will be visible to millions of players. And the characters name will be important in their decision to purchase.
(On a side note; buying a bad character name encourages you to change it's name. So, it's in Blizzards best interest to not allow post-auction name changes and force users to use their paid services.)
Selecting character names ahead of time should be a pretty easy process for you. You'll want fantasy centric names, names similar to Diablo key-players, simple or short words, aggressive language, and real names. Short names are more valuable, and they must not contain special characters.
Remember that internal Diablo names will be reserved, so don't set your hopes too high for Deckard, Diablo, Tristram, Barbarian, Blizzard, etc. Blizzard, friends, and family will also have first pick of the litter before you. :)
Some names to get you started - Legolas, Aragorn, Frodo, Gandalf, Lich, Blood, Death, Killer, Jason, Timmy, Tim, Bob, Bruce, Glob, Ghost, Smite, Shock, Nope, Purple, Pink, Orange, Focus, Strength, Panda, Dyablo, Wicked, Nasty, Wild, Banker, Vendor, Frost, Awesome, Awesomesauce, etc.
Remember to make a list well ahead of time with all of your top choices and backups.
To get a good idea of popular names, search Google for "naming your wow character" or use WoW Armory to find out which names are used the most (and then compare to your own list to determine the most valuable ones).
tl;dr; Character names will be a highly valued commodity. Servers are regional/country based, whereas WoW had multiple realms per region, so you will be competing for awesome names against many more players.
Picture the following scenario.
* You need real money to be able to play this game.
* While playing the game, you don't actually use real money but rather special "chips".
* You pay to play the game, but it can be taken away from you at any time. The people who own the game can tell you to stop playing due to cheating or for no reason at all.
* It's a game of chance, and your level of winnings or losses are random.
* You have the option to cash out and convert your chips back into real money.
* The owner of the game provides complimentary items (comps) to encourage players to continue playing this game of chance.
* Whether you win or lose, the owner of the game will always make a profit from you.
Am I describing a slot machine, a game of roulette, a table game, or Diablo 3?
(And yes, Blizzard is waiving the listing portion of the fee for a limited number of transactions... this feels just like a casino comping players to keep them gambling or to experiment first to get hooked.)
I will be creating some blogposts about gold/cash making in Diablo 3. The new RMT system really interests me, so I'll be jumping right into that. It will be easier once the game comes out, of course, but for now I already know of some sneaky (and currently unpublished) methods. Most of them will be legitimate methods of gold farming and I haven't decided yet whether to create the more shady guides. :)
But first, there's something I need to get off my chest.
If anyone ever says that World of Warcraft has never had duping or that Diablo 3 will never have duplication exploits because WoW has never had them; I am sorry, but you are completely wrong.
Anyone who believes this is;
* Misinformed and they believed it without question
* or, they don't know for sure but go with the flow
* or, they only read official Blizzard press releases and didn't read other WoW news sites
* or, they never read the forums
* or, they know it happened but they drank the blue kool-aid, pushed it into the back of their memories, will only say positive things about Blizzard, and will try to convince everyone else in their beliefs.
Diablo 3 will have dupe exploits and tricks as well, I have no doubt in my mind. Item duping, gold duping, point duping, or stat duping (e.g. stacking of stats).. users will always find a way.
Blizzard has a great team of programmers but a lot of these exploits slip by. They have a limited quantity of QA Testers, and besides, they are tasked with testing the gameplay, quests, and bugs that appear in normal gaming sessions for the casual player. They don't sit there with WPE trying to exploit the game.
Exploits are discovered over a long period of time and after thousands of players have played the game and stretched the variety of gameplay in ever which direction.
Unfortunately, most gamers believe "Diablo = Serverside = no Dupes/Hacks". I am completely shocked by the amount of players who believe this. Wikipedia and even wowwiki even have "duping" articles because they're so common. Please, question everything.
If anyone every does tell you that "wow duping never happened", just send them a link back here. Below are some examples of item duplication exploits and tricks that have taken place on the official World of Warcraft realms.
* From 2004-2005 [LINK 1] [LINK 2]
a. Player 1 hands player 2 a large amount of gold* They extended maintenance in late July to fix the dupe exploit that had been around since beta. [LINK]
b. Player 1 goes into the instance. If the bug works, he/she will get kicked back out after a delay.
c. Player 1 will have the original amount of gold he had before he traded and player 2 will still have the traded gold he received as well.
d. Rince and Repeat
* After this issue was fixed, players found out another method by fearing players (or mind controlling them) into bugged instances and duped items and gold again. This method still worked in TBC.
* From 2004-2008 [LINK 1] [LINK 2]
Trade equipment with another player, make a character with an inappropriate name to have it reported and reset or con a GM. Policy exploitation could also be used by claiming hacks, and having the account reset. All items/gold duped.
* From 2004-2010 Trade gold/items with another player, have the character rolled back to the state before the trade by entering bugged instances, realm reset exploits, or GM request.
* 2004-2009 Duplication and control of disenchants by filling up bag slots, cancelling, and trading items.
* 2004-2010 Recharging items with limited charges by re stacking items with newer timers.
* 2007 Guild Bank rollbacks.
* 2008 Rolling BG instability issue, causing players to DC and rollback (trade items first).
* 2004-2006 Auction House duping. Players were duping nexus crystals mostly, but any item could be duped. You would place multiple items in the Auction House as quickly as possible. As soon as the first item expires, you cancel the rest of our auctions. You would get back all of the cancelled items (20 crystals) and you would also get back the "expired items" (19 crystals.) That's 39 Nexus crystals duped from 20 posted.
* 2004-2005 Warsong Badge Dupe [LINK]
* 2010 The loot bag duping trick for infinite Justice Points [LINK]
* 2010-2011 Non-combat pet dupe exploit.
* 2011 Daily quest duping by exploiting the time zones of shared instance servers to reset timer.
And remember.. these are just the ones that made it public because they were so exhaustively exploited. How many dupe exploits are there that only a couple, very cautious, people know about?