- In-game RL money auctions? Its natural that it'll exist. If you followed fan-based sites from diablo 2, wow, etc, there's already a massive parallel market for items, blizzard is just capitalizing on that potential revenue. I'm gessing most people would rather use a blizzard-made system than rely on fan-sites/paypal transactions.
I'll personaly not use it, but if people are into that kind of stuff, then its a safer bet.
Two different things.
Diablo 3 will include a saler/buyer relationship. While previous games did not. Parallel markets can not provide the same constraints as an ingame market.
Here's a list of constraints that are going to be included:
-Developper/publisher: they want to sell as much as possible games. They must cater to the largest audience possible.
-salers: they want the items they sell to provide buyers with as much fun as possible (one could imagine in a powergaming game) and they shall want the ways they acquire those extraordinary items not to be that fun so that players do not engage massively in cropping items.
-buyers: they want the items they buy to provide fun but not that much fun the auctions commonly skyrocket. They want the ways to acquire extraordinary items to be fun so that many players engage into them.
Not naturally conciliating trends. In order to alleviate the stuff, developpers could introduce a bingo effect, an extraordinary item introduced x per months, and that would sell very high compared to other items.
Developpers could also rely on a fourth party, a patsies group. They will buy the game so satisfy developpers' constraints.
And they might be between, neither enjoying the fun high end items provide as the buyers do and never making money as the salers do, allowing buyers and salers to conciliate opposite pulsions on their back.
Nothing very natural in the way stuff could arrange.
