Will Fallen Tooth recover in value as more people start making new character alts and start to craft some end-normal gear? At 40-50g each, I’m willing to take that bet. I have already bought several hundred!

There appears to be a bit of confusion as to how the RMAH will function in each region. In fact, it was only made clear a few days ago that each Region has more than 1 RMAH, that contain completely separate listings in them.

Each region has its own Economy and item pool. However, within each region, say, North American Region, there is a separate Real Money Auction House for EACH currency within that region, eg. a USD RMAH, a AUD RMAH etc.

So the $USD RMAH will have its own, fully separate listings from sellers and buyers who are using $USD as their main currency, and the $AUD RMAH will have its own listings for buyers and sellers using the $AUD currency. However, one can easily switch between the currencies, for example an Australian player can switch to the $USD Auction house and buy an item in US dollars, or even sell an item in $USD, no different to buying goods online from the US with an Australian credit card. Conversion fees would likely apply on your credit card, or Paypal account.

This means that gold, and all other items might cost more or less in each sub-region RMAH, further increasing the amount of potential profiteering by switching between currencies. So be prepared to see the case of Gold and other items being cheaper if you use AUD than USD, and vice versa.

This also applies to Europe, which have a few separate currencies.

Here are each of the individual RMAH’s:

	Blizzard Quote:
	The Americas U.S. Dollar (USD), Mexican Peso (MXN), Brazilian Real (BRL), Argentine Peso (ARS), Chilean Peso (CLP), Australian Dollar (AUD) Europe British Pound Sterling (GBP), Euro (EUR), Russian Ruble (RUB)

And before you ask, YES, we will be covering all major Currencies on this site (US, AUD, GBP, EUR)

What’s changed since Diablo 2?

1. Nearly all of the game data is stored server-side
2. Botting has become more technically challenging
3. The game world is more visually complex
4. Item finding is no longer based on simple boss kills

Game data being stored server-side will likely cut back on, if not eliminate, most item duplication methods that were popular in Diablo 2. Remaining undetected while hooking into the game client will be more difficult, while increased visual complexity makes pixel recognition techniques more challenging. In addition, it’s no longer reasonable to create a bot to kill a single monster or boss repeatedly for hours – the drops simply don’t make sense. If a bot in Diablo 3 has to “play” more of the game there will be more opportunities for technical problems to arise.

In short, bot developers will have to jump through more hoops to achieve the same results they did in Diablo 2.

Areas of interest for botters

1. In-game spam and advertisements
2. Auction House interactions
3. Item Finding

The above are ranked in order of technical difficulty. Blizzard will likely aggressively ban spam bots, but they are the easiest to create. Automating auction house interactions (e.g. “Watch for item X to be listed at Y price, then buyout”) are certainly possible, though more involved to create and of questionable value. Finally, while item finding bots are the most lucrative, they’re also the most difficult to develop.

The RMAH incentivizes botting
While botting is going to be a more technically difficult task, it will also be more highly incentivized in Diablo 3. Much of the Diablo 2 botting scene was concerned with selling items for cash via third party websites. Blizzard has made it simple to exchange found items for cash, which raises the ultimate question:

Will botting produce a profit before the account is banned?
It is critical to remember that botting is primarily a tool to make money – if profit margins are too slim, then botting will cease to be an attractive opportunity. Bot users are investing $60 in the purchase of the game and some amount of time to level a character. Depending on the timeframe for Blizzard to identify the bot and ban the account, it may not be lucrative for botters to continue to invest in new accounts. This assumes that botters aren’t simply stealing accounts, which is entirely possible (and perhaps likely).

The bottom line is this: If botters cannot earn more than their sunk cost ($60 + time to level) before being banned, then they will cease to develop and use bots on a large scale.

Bots probably won’t have as large an impact as you think
The real question we ought to be asking ourselves is whether botting is really going to impact our ability to enjoy the game.

While spamming is annoying, it is an ineffective technique for generating profit in Diablo 3. Diablo 2’s spam bots were ultimately a tool to drive traffic to third party item selling websites, making the bots highly profitable and cheap to create and manage. In Diablo 3, third party item selling websites will be in direct competition with the RMAH – likely resulting in their disappearance from the scene.

With spamming gone, you simply won’t be aware of bots. They won’t be in public games and their names won’t be listed with the items being sold on the RMAH. The only real impact botting would have on your personal enjoyment of the game is by damaging the in-game markets. While Blizzard will likely be doing everything in their power to stop bots in Diablo 3, we simply won’t have a very good way to gauge if botting is having a substantial impact on the economy.

Each regional server is going to contain a vast number of players – so many that by comparison botters will likely have a negligible impact on the economy. Changes to the in-game markets will happen over time for various reasons and we aren’t going to be able to definitively point our fingers at botting as the source of our problems. We may postulate that botting is destroying the economy, but without any factual evidence Blizzard will insist that everything is “working as intended”.

Botters will be, by and large, invisible. While they play by a different set of rules than most of us, their ability to force our playstyle to change has been drastically minimized.

It is possible that Paypal will charge an additional fee, BUT I don’t think it will be on every transaction. For example, Paypal charges a fee for the AH transaction to Blizzard, (since they are sending you the money), hence why Blizzard charges the additional 15% on top to cover that fee. There might be other paypal fees that aren’t unique to Diablo 3, such as conversion fees, withdraw fees etc. But I don’t think it will be a fee per transaction, and if it is, probably single-digit percent based.

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Not surprisingly, Blizzard have announced that the Diablo 3 Real Money Auction House will not be available immediately upon launch, but rather will be enabled approximately 1 week later. The gold-only Auction House however, will be available immediately.

The main reason I can imagine for this is they want the Economy to settle itself better before people start throwing things on the RMAH for random, uneducated amounts. As well as the giving people a chance to get a better perspective on what they want to buy and sell.

Blizzard have also created an all new Auction House page on the official website:

	Blizzard Quote:
	Want to know more about Diablo III’s new auction house feature? We’ve just updated the Diablo III web site with a comprehensive Auction House guide that walks you through the ins and outs of Diablo III’s in-game item marketplace, including details on buying and selling, a breakdown of how the real-money auction house works (in regions where available), and more. You’ll also find some important information on Battle.net account-security requirements that players interested in using the real-money auction house will need to know about. The gold-based auction house opens its doors worldwide on May 15 with the launch of Diablo III, and we plan to bring the real-money auction house online approximately one week after that. This is a new service that includes lots of complex elements, so we are going to take a little extra time to ensure the game gets off to a good start before we flip the switch and open the real-money auction house for business. For more information, head to the freshly minted Diablo III Auction House website, or check out the updated Auction House FAQ.

The official FAQ is now reading that fees have gone from $1.25 for items to $1.00 for items. Still 15% for Commodities.

It appears that PayPal will charge a 15% fee if you elect to receive proceeds from a sale via Paypal, rather than Battle.net Balance. I imagine this 15% will be to the “taxed” amount (the amount left after Blizzard takes out their own fee). So if you sell a Sword for $5.00, Blizzard will take $1.00, and Paypal will take 15% of $4.00 = $0.60. You will make a $3.40 profit out of the $5.00. Not bad.

We will also be tweeting market movements and other interesting occurrences that go on in the Diablo 3 Economy. So if you’re in to seeing tweets along the lines of “Gold reaches new all time record high of $0.15 per 1000g” than you will especially enjoy it

Well let me try and give you some insight on why cornering the market is the worst thing you can try to do in the Diablo 3 Auction House.

To begin, I’ll explain what Cornering the Market actually means to those who aren’t familiar with the concept. Cornering the market is when someone tries to get a monopoly on a particular item by buying them all out and starving the market of that item. The trader than begins to list the goods slowly, but at a much higher price than its usual market value and makes a profit.

Here is why this idea is doomed to fail in Diablo 3. I’ll put it in point form for easy-reading:

1) The rate at which the item is created is unchanged. This means that the influx rate of this item is still the same, and there are just as many of them entering the market as before. This in essence diminishes the effect on the market by purchasing all existing stock , because you haven’t controlled the rate of how many of these items are coming in to the economy. You might dent the pricing of the item temporarily, but it wouldn’t be anywhere near enough to cover the listing fees associated with the purchase and sale, and the eventual reintroduction of those items back in to the saturated market.

2) Diablo 3 RMAH is region based, and therefore has millions of users per AH. Unlike WoW, which is segmented in to realms of several thousand players. This means that the amount of capital one would require to purchase all existing stock of any item is absolutely huge. It also means that the sheer volume of items being listed every minute is also huge, reducing the price variance of goods, particularly when large volumes are purchased.

3) Cornering the market would only work for items that have limited quantities and don’t have a consistent influx. Aka, nothing in Diablo 3.

Cornering the market is not just a in-game concept, it exists in many forms in the real world. It is almost always done by controlling a limited-quantity object, OR controlling the production of an object, rather than an object with a constant influx. For example, you can’t corner the Corn market by going to a supermarket and buying out all the corn, because the rate at which corn is produced is unchanged. However, you could corner the commercial real-estate market in a small area by purchasing a large quantity of retail property and setting the rent at a higher rate than normal, because the demand from retailers will still be the same, and they will need to set up shop somewhere in this area to operate.

For example, if you were selling 10,000 gold @ $0.10 per 1000g that would equal the minimum sale price of $1.00, but you cannot list any less than 10,000g at that price, as it would be lower than $1.00 worth of gold. Same goes for Commodities such as crafting materials.

There is also a minimum buying amount that must also be at least $1.00. For example you cannot buy $0.05 worth of gold, you would need to buy at least $1.00 worth.

Previously, you could only sell Gold and Commodities for a minimum of $1.00 each, which was highly problematic due to the fact that 1000g will be worth much less than $1.00 on average. Not surprisingly since the change, the price of gold and Subtle Essence has dropped by a factor of 20.

The most obvious reason why Blizzard have insisted on a minimum listing price at all is because tiny transactions are simply not financially viable for them to allow, as it costs them money and time to process transactions, maintain and auditing trail and customer service issues etc.

Equipment still has a flat $1.25 selling fee per successful sale.

Myself and many of you out there were wondering how they were going to address this blatant problem of the $1.00 minimum fee, and once again Blizzard has impressed with a very elegant solution that solves the issue.

Thanks to Enlil from our forums for the tip.

This is nothing new, such scams have been very common in previous games that have currency and economies involved, most notably WoW. However with the Diablo 3 RMAH, some less-knowledgeable players may think that these guides will make them money and will fall for the scam, so please spread the word.

There is a vast amount of free resources, guides and information around the Internet, as well as forums and discussion boards with like-minded, intelligent people who have useful knowledge to share. So remember, DO NOT GIVE ANY MONEY to people for these so-called guides, or anything else for that matter. Not only will they not make you any money, but they will fool you in to making terrible investment choices that will cause you to incur further losses.

*Update: It appears this is a bug in patch 16, static Fee’s are still in.

	Blizzard Quote:
	We are aware that, in the Diablo III beta, a 15% transaction was previously displayed when selling items in the Beta Bucks auction house. This was a configuration error, and has been corrected. We do not currently have plans to alter the auction house fee structure for the beta, as previously discussed here: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4062879314

Profit on selling items will no longer be discriminated against depending on their value, and fees will be proportional to what you are selling.

The official Diablo 3 website has been updated with numerous changes, particularly in the crafting area:

- Tome of Secrets is no longer Rare, and is now Magic

- The Gold-cost of crafting items has DRASTICALLY increased. The best craftable weapons cost 171k gold to craft.

- The DPS of Legendaries has changed. Azurewrath is now a whopping 500-700 DPS, while the base version (Rune Sword) is around 200 DPS, Windforce is around 700 DPS. This indicates that the Legendary affixes are pretty +damage-heavy.

So it looks like the price of crafting those end-game items will be extremely high, and that’s Blizzards plan to combat gold-inflation. I would envision that the first time you craft these bad-boys they will almost always be an upgrade. And than you will continue to iterate your gear-stats by crafting them over time and maximizing the affix ranges.

Very different to how it functioned in D2, where it was extremely difficult to get even a decent item from affix rolls. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.

This time Varquynne ran a full playthrough, using single target attacks (no AoE) so he could keep track of exactly what dropped and where, and put all those figures into Tableau Software, a sort of infographic script generator. That program turned all that data into an interactive series of charts and graphs, which you can play with to get an amazing level of detail about pretty much everything. How many chests, monsters, barrels/urns, champions, what every one of them dropped, how much gold per stack, in what levels everything was found, total items and gold in each level, monster and barrel density ratings, total ground covered by the game levels, and much more.

You see the script below; be sure you’ve got tableausoftware.com enabled if you run a script blocker, and use the tabs on top of the application to cycle through the multiple pages, each of which has numerous interactive counters and charts and tables. It’s an amazing amount of data and gives you a whole new impression of what’s most valuable to clear (or not) in Diablo III.

Thanks to Flux for the news post.