Diablo III Auction House: Need Cash Now?

Written by Erik Kubik, kube00 Thursday, 14 June 2012 06:00

"Need Cash Now," that would be a good slogan for Blizzard or how about "Cash 4 Gold?!" Blizzard recently updated Diablo III and with it came the long anticapted Real-Money Auction House. So what does all of this mean for gamers? Should we quit our day jobs?

The Real-Money Auction House (AH) just means Blizzard is going to be making money. The Americas region are the first to have access to it and per Blizzard's classification this means North America, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia. Several currencies are supported. Gamers currently only have access to the AH in their region. More information is here. Diablo III may be free to play but to sell items for USD, Blizzard requires a few more steps.

Gamers will have to attach a Battle.net Mobile Authenticator or use a Battle.net Mobile Authenticator app with their Battle.net account. If you want to link your Paypal account to buy or sell goods, gamers will have to register for the Battle.net SMS Protect service. This layer of added security uses a service that will occasionally send text messages to your phone with codes that must be entered online to complete transactions. And what online Auction House would be complete without a few fees? Blizzard will take $1 per item one sells. Eventually when Blizzard activates the commodity sales, they will take 15% of that completed sale. In the end gamers will need to sell items for more than the current rate of a few dollars.

My advice is, don’t quit your day job or think this would make a good summer job. I'm sure after fees and time you spend trying to farm those inferno items you will make a few bucks an hour and have carpal tunnel. It appears even the rarest of items are going for very little on the Auction House and everyone is undercutting each other. It’s worse than eBay. Honestly you may be better off selling the items for in-game gold instead. I wonder if Blizzard will legalize gold selling down the road?