Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014 • Hacker News Board

Re: Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

#121

Post by jerf » Wed, Sep 18, 2013, 2:32 AM UTC

Volpe wrote: post #117

jerf wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lesson, applicable to games, startups, governance, and indeed systems engineering in general, is that systems react . You can not look at an existing system, then say "Ah, this system is doing X, so I shall do Y which will cause the result Z, and nothing else ." In this case, you can't look at the D2 community, and say, "Ah ha, I shall inject this system for extracting money, and therefore it shall be exactly lik…

> There probably is a way to "monetize" the Diablo community more successfully I think this is a solved problem: Player contributed Hats.

Alas, if only you had read as far as the next sentence....

Re: Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

#122

Post by alex_c » Wed, Sep 18, 2013, 2:36 AM UTC

chc wrote: post #69

ordinary wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been public complaints from Blizzard employees about Battle.net. Community managers and developers both have stated that improvements to Battle.net are far harder to push through than changes to the games proper. Why exactly this is, I'm not sure. My guess would be that it's either seriously understaffed or drowning in bureaucracy.

I'd bet it's drowning in bureaucracy for a reason — Battle.net is a common component in virtually everything the company creates, so any change to it will impact a lot of people's work in unforeseen ways.

Well, still (or perhaps even more so) - if they considered something like chat rooms to be as essential as many users feel, it would have been easier to implement earlier rather than later, when there are more products to support.

Then again, something like chat rooms could be implemented per game, minimizing impact on the entire battle.net system.

It just wasn't seen as a priority, or there wasn't the political will to push it through, or there's something else we don't know.

Re: Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

#123

Post by ChuckMcM » Wed, Sep 18, 2013, 3:41 AM UTC

_wp3r wrote: post #98

ChuckMcM wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so spot on. Someone asked me when we would run out of oil, my answer, "Never". "Never?!" they spat out, but look at how quickly we use it, look at how finite a resource it is, Etc. And I replied, as it gets rare, the price will go up, as the price goes up other things will be substituted, as they are substituted the demand will go down. Demand goes down and the time to exhaustion stretches out. Long tail curv…

eve style?

Clearly very much inspired by Eve Online but still in the Fantasy/Roleplaying vein. One of the interesting things was a physical model of the world with actual geology such that ore and such took a lot to mine. Of course SWToR was kind of down that path and it failed miserably so it may not be possible.

Re: Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

#124

Post by martindale » Wed, Sep 18, 2013, 3:41 AM UTC

josh2600 wrote: post #8

So, I have a bit of a personal episode here I'd like to share. I played a lot of Diablo 2, more than I care to admit, and so the launch of Diablo 3 was a really big deal to me. I pre-ordered it on day 1, I pre-installed the game weeks before launch and I read every piece of information about the game. When the game came out, I initially loved it; just an absolute pleasure to play. It was great, until I found the auct…

I don't understand how so many of these top-tier organizations miss the simple axiom of truth; build a great product.

Re: Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

#125

Post by ChuckMcM » Wed, Sep 18, 2013, 3:54 AM UTC

jshen wrote: post #116

ChuckMcM wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so spot on. Someone asked me when we would run out of oil, my answer, "Never". "Never?!" they spat out, but look at how quickly we use it, look at how finite a resource it is, Etc. And I replied, as it gets rare, the price will go up, as the price goes up other things will be substituted, as they are substituted the demand will go down. Demand goes down and the time to exhaustion stretches out. Long tail curv…

I agree with you, but the energy example is flawed in that it assumes we will find alternatives that aren't very expensive. We won't run out of oil, but we may very likely run out of cheap energy.

The statement "cheap energy" is really hard to quantify (like 'largest integer') you can say "Gee Coal is really Cheap and there is tons and tons of it!" Except that coal smoke is killing people, contaminating large swaths of land etc. But at $100 a barrel you can gasify coal and make clean gas power plants cost effectively, but what is the $100 really mean? Its local currency (US Dollars) in a world economy. At a high enough price you can build nuclear plants and fast breeder reactors that eat all their own fuel. And use that energy to make long chain hydrocarbons (aka oil) out of CO2 and electrolisys of water [1]. Politically nonviable but that too is a system, what do people vote for energy and synthesize oil for plastics or a degenerating quality of life? There is some thoughts that you can run F-T reactors using concentrated solar in the desert.

But to you point of 'running out of cheap energy' what does that mean if the economy has adjusted to the cost of that energy? Look at electric cars as a prime example, sure they are expensive today but what happens 10 years from now when they are everywhere? Now $200/barrel oil, converted into electricity at a fossil fuel plant is give you the same miles per $ as burning it as gasoline used to do in your internal combustion engine.

Constant adaptation by the system to the constraints applied to it.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tropsch

Re: Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

#126

Post by Volpe » Wed, Sep 18, 2013, 4:03 AM UTC

jerf wrote: post #121

Volpe wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There probably is a way to "monetize" the Diablo community more successfully I think this is a solved problem: Player contributed Hats.

Alas, if only you had read as far as the next sentence....

I did. Was just pointing it out as "THE" solution (rather than "A" solution), for all things. In an attempt to be slightly absurd, and slightly humorous.

Seems I failed at that.

Re: Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

#127

Post by diminoten » Wed, Sep 18, 2013, 4:45 AM UTC

thefreeman wrote: post #108

diminoten wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this attitude rational? I can't understand how people react like this. Is it left over anger from when the situation was in the undesirable configuration? Can they not see how their opinions have had an influence in something they're passionate about? I can't see how someone who wanted this to happen would consider Blizzard to be still in the wrong.

Because they already made all of their money from it in the first place. Now they are pretending they give a shit in order to try to get more money from people. They showed their true colors when they destroyed my favorite franchise of all time. I will never give them another cent.

What makes you say that greed is their "true colors" when this could be their true colors, finally shining through when the changes they were forced to make for D3 didn't pan out like the money-grubbing overlords wanted?

I just don't see how you can claim one completely fabricated story is true but the other isn't.

Re: Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

#128

Post by diminoten » Wed, Sep 18, 2013, 4:47 AM UTC

alan_cx wrote: post #114

diminoten wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this attitude rational? I can't understand how people react like this. Is it left over anger from when the situation was in the undesirable configuration? Can they not see how their opinions have had an influence in something they're passionate about? I can't see how someone who wanted this to happen would consider Blizzard to be still in the wrong.

Why should it be rational? Who cares if you understand it or not? Frankly, no one has to. Fact is people do end up feeling that way, and it costs sales. Worse still, it costs loyalty. So know it exists, the accept it as a reality to deal with. Lastly, ever had a boy/girl friend who cheated? Were you still interested after the other person was dropped? Did all return to normal? Is that rational? Some people are still…

Because I'm not talking about any of the things you're talking about, I'm talking specifically about why a person thinks that.

You say it doesn't matter and "who cares", but I asked the question, so obviously I care.

Re: Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

#129

Post by jshen » Wed, Sep 18, 2013, 5:09 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #125

jshen wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, but the energy example is flawed in that it assumes we will find alternatives that aren't very expensive. We won't run out of oil, but we may very likely run out of cheap energy.

The statement "cheap energy" is really hard to quantify (like 'largest integer') you can say "Gee Coal is really Cheap and there is tons and tons of it!" Except that coal smoke is killing people, contaminating large swaths of land etc. But at $100 a barrel you can gasify coal and make clean gas power plants cost effectively, but what is the $100 really mean? Its local currency (US Dollars) in a world economy. At a hi…

Over the last 60 years global energy consumption has grown exponentially. There is a strong case to be made that rising living standards globally and global economic growth are dependent on this level of energy growth.

Nothing you said can come close to meeting anything close to this level of growth and I see no reason to believe our system is prepared for anything less than such growth without great pain.

Re: Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

#130

Post by gisenberg » Wed, Sep 18, 2013, 5:13 AM UTC

ihsw wrote: post #51

jerf wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lesson, applicable to games, startups, governance, and indeed systems engineering in general, is that systems react . You can not look at an existing system, then say "Ah, this system is doing X, so I shall do Y which will cause the result Z, and nothing else ." In this case, you can't look at the D2 community, and say, "Ah ha, I shall inject this system for extracting money, and therefore it shall be exactly lik…

One has to wonder about the plans for Hearthstone (another F2P game from Blizzard). The recent discontinuation of WoW TCG seems to make it apparent that they may be pushing Hearthstone as a replacement. Cards Against Humanity is a really popular table-top card game, and Blizzard would be smart to be taking a hard look at emulating it. Attempting to "monetize" Hearthstone could be dangerous.

From what I understand, the discontinuation of WoW TCG has more to do with the relationship between Cryptozoic and Blizzard. Blizzard and Cryptozoic are competing in the same space with Hex and Hearthstone, which makes for a complicated relationship.