They closed the Auction Houses due to FinCEN introducing regulations which meant that Blizzard would have been liable for tracking and paying a lot of money on transactions. They closed the AHs around two weeks before the FinCEN regulations went into effect. They did this to avoid the potential legal responsibilities and payments, not due to low revenues from the RMAH.
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Iâm sure it played a part. However, a big company like Blizzard could have kept track and paid their share if it was profitable enough. It just wasnât.
Diablo 3 classic funded its own expansion pack, it was profitable but most of the thing went into producing Reaper of Souls. To my opinion, they cut and scrapped the second expansion for it is not available for monetization. At least I think it that way.
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FinCEN was about investigating potential international money-laundering. Blizzard didnât want to be anywhere near that legally. Thatâs a whole heap of potential lawsuits they preferred to avoid completely by just not having auction houses.
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I donât know what games were you playing, but most games have items that gives good bonuses, sometimes better than your gear or filling a gap that youâre lacking like cooldown reduction. Or maybe they are stronger like +2 all skills, but not absolutelly needed. They are not build defining like D3 where the items gives you 500% increased dmg to X% skill or damage reduction when using 6pc set.
Do you actually play D3? Most 6 set bonuses are in the tens of thousands.
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Trading is okay and even in-built AH of whatever kind is okay, but it must be severely restricted with 1-2 trading operations per 24 hours for each account. Trade what you really want to trade and but play the actual game to get all the stuff - not AH, trade sites or forums.
Seems like a system that punishes everyday players but would make botters dominate as they tend to have a multitude of accounts.
It doesnât punish anyone. It just offers a secondary option to get some gear.
but would make botters dominate as they tend to have a multitude of accounts.
They wonât get any profit with such a restriction. Especially so if D4 devs keep their promise to make best items account-bound (that is - untradeable).
Iâd say maybe max 1-2 trades per month. Allows you to fill a hole in your gear through trading (âbad luck protectionâ), but would not allow you to get most of your gear that way. And would also more or less enforce item for item trading. And if not, just make all tradeable items Bind on Trade too.
Honestly all they need to do is remove Gold from trades, and make it Item for Item only (Iâd personally go for even more restrictions but for start/testing-purposes might be enough, probably)
i.e. make sure that no âhoardingâ and/or âinflationâ (long term or otherwise) problems arise, or at least thatâs what one would think 
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It is up to Devs, they see all the numbers, statistics, public test results and so on. The core idea is to make trading an option, but never something obligatory, - even if you want to fight for the very top of the ladder. Time restriction will be a welcome thing for D4 players if presented rightly. For example this can be done through NPC vendors, for whom time restricted trading fits well and feels real, as we never see anyone buying something from them -) They always stand alone doing nothing -)
Honestly all they need to do is remove Gold from trades, and make it Item for Item only
See how D2 trading works. No one trades gold there. Any open market makes its own currency very fast. Back in 2000ies D2 had Stone of Jordan ring for that. Later on - runes. Sill later on - virtual âHigh Runeâ, which itself even doesnât exist as an item, but everything can be priced with it fast and traded accordingly. What I mean - removing items from the trade in no way limits the trading itself.
Rofl dude xD
1-2 a month?
Some people are playing every day
Who knows, the idea wasnât to remove an âitemâ from trade, the goal is to remove an âuniversal trade currencyâ that everyone would âpriceâ trades upon, perhaps make the game super hard then, not make trade a âhigh endâ only thing but maybe a bit of earlier potential impact but not good at late game ?
Hereâs an idea, maybe make âtrade tokenâ a thing ?, i.e. canât complete a trade without both sides inserting a trade-token in the trade itself and âlate gameâ gear require more tokens (in comparison of item value than earlier on) to complete⌠?
The core idea Iâm âchasingâ here and trying to achieve is - make trade be a viable option âhalfwayâ in the game but not a âwho gets to be the #1 on the ladderâ when everyoneâs MAXed type thing⌠
For me itâs not so much about having an âeconomyâ but just having the freedom to give my friend something nice I found, or twinking out my alts so that my 2nd & 3rd characters can kill & progress more quickly than my 1st. It feels natural to make use of loot in this way in Diablo that put loot games on the map.
Something to consider is that LoD itemization is arguably inferior to D2 classic, mainly due to the introduction of a few ridiculous runes that stand head-and-shoulders above everything else. Not unlike the D3V situation where everyone per class was after the same âmainstatâ perfect roll. At least in D2 it wasnât a prerequisite to find an ultra-rare rune that lets you freaking teleport, in order to beat Hell. Would I enjoy âendgameâ stuff (endurance trials, boss runs?) in D4 that practically requires that ultra-rare stuff or else I learn to be a god at D4? If I know that thereâs no new content locked behind it apart from completing the challenge itself, yes I would. But itâs not easy to invent reasons to keep playing a single character while keeping the absolute maximum power in check.
Either way, theyâre going the route of WoW and keeping the best loot BoA, out of trading. It seemed to work pretty well there.
Dude, please quote in context. You know damned well u was talking about the RMAH. Ot being profitable. The box sales paid for the expansion. The AB execâs would have set revenue goals for the monetization of the game. If it was on target, the CA state law would have done anything. Money speaks, and if the RMAH was bringing in expected revenues, it would still be a thing.
We also know the second expansion soon was canned when active development was stopped on D3 just prior to RoS launching.
Yup. Proposed a 1:1 item swap. It has to the same slot, same rarity, and same level.
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You can twink out your alt. No or restricted trading wonât effect that.
I take that to mean that most or all D3 loot is âaccount boundâ and D4 is expected to follow suit?
Still it would be nice to share with friends between sessions. The more incentives to amass collections in a loot game, the better.
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How much they play should not affect how often they can trade. If it takes like 6 months to get BIS on average, 1-2 trades per month is still 6-12 trades. You could still get nearly full BIS through trading then.