Diablo III - It's official

[Grall]

What truly worries me regarding Diablo 3 and the real money auction house is how blizzard plans to handle credit card theft/fraud and illegal money laundering.

Suppose you're a dope dealer or working in some other kind of black market business. You have a legit identity put up an essentially worthless bunch of items for very high prices on the AH, then you buy them all with your dope money. Rinse and repeat as required until all your dirty money's been washed squeaky clean through Blizzard's eminent service.

Same process applies to stolen credit cards. Just juggle the same items back and forth until the card's been maxed out.

...Or is this not possible? Is there some kind of enforced waiting period until transactions are processed? What are the safeguards against fraud and theft?

 

[cjo]

What truly worries me regarding Diablo 3 and the real money auction house is how blizzard plans to handle credit card theft/fraud and illegal money laundering.

Suppose you're a dope dealer or working in some other kind of black market business. You have a legit identity put up an essentially worthless bunch of items for very high prices on the AH, then you buy them all with your dope money. Rinse and repeat as required until all your dirty money's been washed squeaky clean through Blizzard's eminent service.

Same process applies to stolen credit cards. Just juggle the same items back and forth until the card's been maxed out.

...Or is this not possible? Is there some kind of enforced waiting period until transactions are processed? What are the safeguards against fraud and theft?

It will probably be obvious to blizzard if a few accounts are listing / buying white / grey items for ££££; they would likely have automated flags on accounts that are doing this,

 

[Grall]

It wouldn't have to be whites or grays, I don't even see why it would be possible to list those on the AH. It could simply be ho-hum yellows, the game's swimming in those.

And so what if the account gets flagged after a number of transactions; you just move on to your next stolen account.

 

[Malo]

Is 15% high or low for money laundering service? I'm not sure who is going to answer that question though lol....

 

[pcchen]

It wouldn't have to be whites or grays, I don't even see why it would be possible to list those on the AH. It could simply be ho-hum yellows, the game's swimming in those.

And so what if the account gets flagged after a number of transactions; you just move on to your next stolen account.

I think the problem is how to "cash out." From what I have read, right now it seems the only way to "cash out" is through PayPal, which takes 15% processing fee. Also, the maximum amount you can have in an account is US$750. I think that you'll have to provide some personal ID (or maybe your PayPal account has to be the same name as your account, or something like that) to bind your account with a PayPal account too. So it's not just stealing an account would work, you also have to steal his/her PayPal account. But if you can do that, I think it's easier to just steal his/her money from PayPal account

Basically I think those limitations imposed by Blizzard is largely to prevent the possibility of money laundering. What they want you to do with RMAH is, you store some money in your account as "battle.net balance," then you buy or sell things with those balances, rather than "cashing out" frequently.

 

[Sigfried1977]

I don't think hardcore normal would be that bad provided you're all twinked out from a character that has played through inferno or from the AH.

Your hardcore character doesn't share the item box with your regular characters. Auction house is different as well.

 

[I.S.T.]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05/23/diablo-iii-is-the-fastest-selling-pc-game-ever/

Who is surprised?

 

[AlNom]

It certainly blows away the SCII launch.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Well, SCII is really a game for a very specific niche. I'd liken them to the sort of people who also memorize frame data and hit boxes in fighting games. That game's sort of a relic of the past (this isn't supposed to sound as negative as might be coming across by the way)

 

[Kaotik]

It certainly blows away the SCII launch.

So, how many "fastest selling game ever" titles Blizz has now?
If I'm not mistaken, top 4 is now Diablo 3, WoW: Cataclysm, WoW: WotLK, WoW: TBC and Starcraft II shouldn't be too badly positioned either, not sure of original WoW

 

[AlphaWolf]

Your hardcore character doesn't share the item box with your regular characters. Auction house is different as well.

Ah, I didn't know that. So cash ah would be the way for the hardcore... Amusing.

So, how many "fastest selling game ever" titles Blizz has now?
If I'm not mistaken, top 4 is now Diablo 3, WoW: Cataclysm, WoW: WotLK, WoW: TBC and Starcraft II shouldn't be too badly positioned either, not sure of original WoW

They are competing in a field of one. Which other major releases are PC only anymore?

 

[Grall]

Euro realm having the conniptions again. Was playing with an awesome barb in a random coop game when I got booted out to the lobby and everything game-related stopped working - joining games, chatting, whispers and so on.

I figured I might need to relog to clear this issue, but now I can't even log back in on the server again. Been like that for half an hour at least now.

 

[Sigfried1977]

And yet people still keep on defending this garbage.

 

[Cyan]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05/23/diablo-iii-is-the-fastest-selling-pc-game-ever/

Who is surprised?

I wouldn't be surprised seeing the numbers at all.... except for the fact that it is a PC game. PC gaming is thankfully recovering, that's a good sign.

My predictions were that it would surpass Diablo 2 launch day, but not by such a huge margin.

Not bad for Diablo to be the fastest selling game in the history of PC. It's also Amazon.com's most preordered PC game of all time! :smile:

I hope they implement a single player mode once and for all. Not being able to play when you want is a big flaw, imho.

@Alphawolf, there is a nice article about why people like Hardcore mode in Diablo series.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-23-going-hardcore-in-diablo-3

I think that people just like creating new characters from time to time and the "realism" and thrill of having just one life.

 

[AlphaWolf]

o@Alphawolf, there is a nice article about why people like Hardcore mode in Diablo series.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-23-going-hardcore-in-diablo-3

I think that people just like creating new characters from time to time and the "realism" and thrill of having just one life.

So the online only adds the equivalent of having a stroke/heart attack when the server issues kill you.

 

[Grall]

And yet people still keep on defending this garbage.

Well, have you even played it yet? Sounds like you haven't...

Teething problems with battle.net are to be expected, D2 had them aplenty, and I'm sure Starcraft and WC3 had them too. Grud knows WoW had its fair share as well around launch, not to mention the Burning Crusade expansion launch! That was just TERRIBLE!

It's a really fun game, coop is great as a monster-rofflestomping romp.

Of course it's disappointing when it doesn't work, but things will settle down in a bit. Like I've said, I personally is not interested in singleplayer AT ALL, for me, all I care about is online. If the realms are down I can't play, which makes me sad, but not having the always-online DRM wouldn't help me in that situation, as I wouldn't play offline anyway.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Been playing it since launch night last week, but thanks for the baseless assumption.

I also don't believe in giving someone a free pass just because they fucked up equally bad on multiple similar occasions in the past, especially not if we're talking about a huge corporation.
I also happen to like single player every once in a while. Many people do.

 

[Grall]

You've been playing a piece of garbage since launch night? Hokay... Either you need a chill pill then, or define what you mean by "garbage" more precisely.

My point about fucking up in the past is that you can't really prepare for the situation of a Blizzard-level game launch in advance. Nobody can. There were ~4.5 MILLION copies in the wild on launch night according to recent figures and statements, and it's a reasonable guess that the vast majority of those copies tried to log in on launch day. That's an enormous load on the infrastructure.

You can do dry test-runs all day, and the stress test Blizzard executed reached 300k concurrent users (which is already significant; it's more than the full population of EVE online for example), but nothing short of a full launch can simulate a full launch, so how do you prepare FULLY for something like that? Can't be done, I'd say.

 

[Sigfried1977]

I'm not talking about the game, I'm talking about the always-on crap. I really like the game ... when it works.

 

[aaronspink]

Well, have you even played it yet? Sounds like you haven't...

Teething problems with battle.net are to be expected, D2 had them aplenty, and I'm sure Starcraft and WC3 had them too. Grud knows WoW had its fair share as well around launch, not to mention the Burning Crusade expansion launch! That was just TERRIBLE!

They are only to be expected because after 10+ years, blizzard still has no clue how to actually run an online service. Blizzard has to be or is at least close to being the worlds worst online service provider. It is like they are still stuck in the early 90s as far as their server designs go.

Most companies with a clue are doing patches in like than 10-15 minutes! Server restarts in under 10 minutes.

With the current available infrastructure worldwide there really is no excuse for any of the issues they've had with the diablo3 launch. The only way they could be having the issues they have had is if they still haven't converted their backend to a modern containerized VM infrastructure. Need instant capacity, enough to support 100 million users? no problem. It really looks like diablo3 like most things blizzard hasn't changed since 95.