Separate realms for RMAH & Gold ONLY AH

[:1]In WoW, Blizz actively chose to diverge the community into PvP realms and PvE realms. Perhaps they predicted that many PvE players would not appreciate playing in the same "universe" as folks that were born to live life on the edge. Thus they chose to explicitly separate their community into PvE and PvP realms and thus the complaining (or even loss of potential players) never occurred by forcing everyone to play on servers with open world-wide PvP.

It sounds like the same fundamental issue is arising with RMAH. So can't we solve this same problem with the same [effective] solution?

Create D3 Realms that allow RMAH and ones that don't. That way for folks who are hating on the idea of RMAH can play on realms where it's illegal (i.e. non-Blizz sanctioned real-money trading) to buy your gear w/ RM. I personally welcome the idea of an RMAH, but perhaps for those who feel this is immoral, they now have their own environment to play in. Obviously this means that Blizz will have to police those realms more heavily (nonRMAH) but at least they will earn back some PR value in recognizing this as a fundamental issue that is dividing their community.

Thoughts?

-Floydman|||The story's a bit different in WoW, because they can't afford a huge consistent world. With D3, where every game is instanced, they would rather have huge realms and not split the player base beyond SC/HC - at least that's how I understand Blizzard's point of view on this.

(Fun fact, there are 200+ or 400+ if you count sides, of WoW realms in US alone. How many in D2? Oh, just 2)|||Quote:








In WoW, Blizz actively chose to diverge the community into PvP realms and PvE realms. Perhaps they predicted that many PvE players would not appreciate playing in the same "universe" as folks that were born to live life on the edge. Thus they chose to explicitly separate their community into PvE and PvP realms and thus the complaining (or even loss of potential players) never occurred by forcing everyone to play on servers with open world-wide PvP.

It sounds like the same fundamental issue is arising with RMAH. So can't we solve this same problem with the same [effective] solution?

Create D3 Realms that allow RMAH and ones that don't. That way for folks who are hating on the idea of RMAH can play on realms where it's illegal (i.e. non-Blizz sanctioned real-money trading) to buy your gear w/ RM. I personally welcome the idea of an RMAH, but perhaps for those who feel this is immoral, they now have their own environment to play in. Obviously this means that Blizz will have to police those realms more heavily (nonRMAH) but at least they will earn back some PR value in recognizing this as a fundamental issue that is dividing their community.

Thoughts?

-Floydman




Well in theory the RMAH will be a huge money maker. In my experience $$ > PR when it comes to corporations. In the end I can see the community segregating in a way that non-buyers will seek out other non-buyers and only play with them, or refuse to group with buyers in games. Alternatively I can also see that once its live noone is going to care and everyone is rushing to end game. I definitely don't see them adding realm options to segregate the buyers from the people who don't agree with it.|||I don't know about splitting players into realms as this is Diablo not an MMO. Perhaps a character could be flagged as gold AH only? So you would have a standard character, hardcore character, and a gold-only character? Kind of a way of saying "this character was tougher to equip since no cash was used".

Of course Blizzard would never do it because to them you would be dividing characters into" agrees with their design choice" and" disagrees with their choice".|||I think it's a good idea, but I doubt it would happen. As above posters have stated, it's all about $$$. The amount of revenue they will generate from the RMAH is going to be fairly substantial. It's just unfortuante that it gives advantage to those who don't wish to invest time into the game, rather real $$.|||Yes well some people have more time than money and others more money than time, this is the way of the world and the masses they are appealing to.|||Quote:








Yes well some people have more time than money and others more money than time, this is the way of the world and the masses they are appealing to.




well said.|||You also have to recognize that markets will still exist for those non RMAH servers, but they will be outside Blizzard controls and sanctions. What this means is that the more unscrupulous players will be able to go to these servers and purchase items from a 3rd party site, creating the same issue that Blizzard is trying to avoid with the RMAH.

These sites will already exist for the HC servers, so if the non HC, non RMAH servers existed, the sites would just expand to cover them as well.