Off-TORpic: In-Game Auction House With Out-Of-Game Money

Off-TORpic is our occasional peek outside the world of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Sometimes it’ll be Star Wars. Sometimes it’ll be games. Sometimes, something else all together. But all the time it will be Off-TORpic.

With the holiday season approaching closer by the day, there is a lot of anticipation for a variety of new games from every studio imaginable.  Bethesda is following up its next-gen system success with Skyrim.  Infinity Ward, an Activision subsidiary, is coming out with the next installment of the Modern Warfare series.  Of course, as we all know, BioWare’s first step into the MMO market with Star Wars: The Old Republic is slated for a holiday release.  One of the most anticipated games of the holiday season is also speculated to be some of SW:TOR’s biggest competition: Blizzard’s Diablo 3.

More than 11 years after its predecessor, Blizzard is in the process of beta testing its newest installment of the series which is set to launch sometime before the end of the year.  Today it was announced by developers of Diablo 3 that they will be implementing a new system to their (not-so-massive) multiplayer game.  They will be offering to users the ability to buy and sell in-game items for either in-game gold or real life money.

Quote by Blizzard Entertainment:

What is the Diablo III auction house system?
Acquiring epic new gear for your characters has always been a big part of the Diablo experience. Because of this, players have found a number of different ways to trade and otherwise obtain items both within and outside of the game. Many of these methods were inconvenient and either tedious (for example, repeatedly advertising for a desired trade in Battle.net chat channels and waiting for responses) or unsafe (e.g., giving credit card information to third-party trading sites). With Diablo III, we’re introducing a powerful auction house system that will provide a safe, fun, and easy-to-use way for players to buy and sell the loot they find in the game, such as weapons, armor, and runestones. Two different versions of the auction house will be available in Diablo III: one based on in-game gold, which players acquire through their adventures, and one based on real-world currency.

What’s Blizzard’s cut?
As with other online auction sites and real-world auction houses, our fee structure will vary by region. However, we plan to collect a nominal fixed transaction fee for each item listed in the auction house. This fee consists of a fixed charge to list the item, which is assessed whether or not the item is successfully sold, and an additional fixed charge that is assessed only if the item is sold. The listing portion of the fee, which helps encourage sensible listing prices and discourage the mass posting of items that are very low quality or would be of little interest to other players, will be waived for a limited number of transactions per account. For players who opt to have the proceeds of their auction house sales go to their third-party payment service account instead of to their Battle.net account, Blizzard will collect a separate “cash-out” fee. Specific details regarding these fees will be announced at a later date.

Needless to say, this announcement came with much discussion and controversy. It’s almost like a micro-transactions, except that the player is the vendor.

Blizzard puts a valid justification for why they are implementing such a system, and regardless of suspicions of their intent, it is something that creates a good business model while protecting its users.  We have seen this sort of thing a lot recently with free-to-play games like Team Fortress 2, but this is the first time a game of this scale has streamlined a player-based auction system that incorporates real money with prices set on an individual basis.

Diablo 3 Auction House

The fear of this type of system, however, is its effect on other games in similar genres.  There is already a numerous amount of speculation from fans that their favorite game could have such a system implemented which worries a great deal of people.  Fans of RPG’s and MMO’s are apprehensive about this system. believing it will eventually be implemented into their favorite games, fearing it may take away from their experience.

Some wonder how this is any different than websites that would buy and sell equipment in Diablo 2 or any MMO.  The difference is that this system is more streamlined; instead of being shunned by the publisher, it is made easily available and even encouraged and is much safer than giving your payment information to a random company.

As more and more MMO’s are changing their payment style to a free-to-play format, more systems like this are bound to appear.  But where is the line drawn?  What makes SW:TOR invulnerable to this kind of system ever appearing?  The answer is: nothing.  Only time will tell what kind of an impact this will have on SW:TOR and all future MMOs.