The How and Why of the Diablo 3 Auction House

Blizzard's always maintained that Versus will be almost impossible to balance anyway, due to the open design of the character classes, and thus is presenting player-versus-player as a casual diversion that rewards participation rather than skill. Fair enough, but there's no question that the real money auction house will spoil the fun of this arena for many players. To put it another way, if Blizzard wants to ensure the irrelevance of Diablo III as a PVP game - and it often sounds like it does - allowing real money item trading is a good way of going about it.

You might almost consider the auction house as Diablo III's real PVP - an absorbing, high-stakes endgame which Pardo believes "will add a lot of depth". It certainly ought to make finding valuable items even more exciting - but it also risks making the game feel more like work, or at least like gambling. Doesn't introducing real money to the ecosystem fundamentally skew our relationship with Diablo?

"I actually don't think it's going to change players that much because it's already true," argues Wilson. "In Diablo II, items have a real monetary value... For the community that is hardcore enough to get those items, the value of them is very real. I think there's a perception issue here." It's a logical answer, but one that maybe underestimates the psychological impact of having the option to buy and sell for cash integrated in the game, one click away.

Blizzard's answer to the accusation that it's offering a platform for gold farmers is much more convincing. By taking the distribution channel out of the farmers' hands and forcing them to compete on a level playing field with the massed millions of players, it drastically weakens them. If you can't beat them, join them - and then beat them, by sheer force of numbers if nothing else.

"Really, the lack of a feature like this within the game is what's encouraged a lot of these markets," says Wilson. "There's a lot of third-party out there; there's a lot more players. There's a lot of players who play a lot." Pardo adds that, unlike in WOW's shared environments, farmers grinding out gold in their own Diablo game aren't harming anyone else's game experience.

We're still left with that question: why do it? Because it will happen anyway - or because Blizzard can profit from it? It has to be both, of course.

Oddly, it's as a business model that the real money auction house is easiest to love. On the surface, it seems shocking and exploitative. But it might actually be the most elegant and unobtrusive way of generating an extra revenue stream for an online game we've ever seen.

It's genuinely optional. It will be entirely possible to enjoy Diablo III to the full without using it; even if you want to enjoy the trading game, a game gold alternative will be provided. Every transaction benefits a player as well as Blizzard, and participation in the auction house is driven entirely by player desire. Player trading is harmonious with the game design, but is in no sense required by it.

It's less tacky, less damaging to the game's fiction, than selling the kind of harmless cosmetic tat Blizzard itself does for World of Warcraft - pets, mounts and so on. It's less forced than selling chunks of downloadable content, such as multiplayer maps, that you can only leave on the shelf if you don't mind getting left out. For the players that want to use it, it will be a vast improvement on what's gone before. And yes, it's only right that Blizzard gets a share of the inevitable real money market around Diablo III.

Why should Blizzard get any extra revenue at all? It's simple economics: Diablo III has cost many years and countless millions to make, and it will be supported and updated online for free, for at least a decade. The new Battle.net service is infinitely better than the old - more than comparable to the Xbox Live Gold you pay for - and optional auction house fees are all that Blizzard is asking for Diablo III's upkeep ("until the expansion that you can't live without," jokes Pardo.)

Furthermore, Pardo is right that this had to happen. The black market in real money trading has been an ugly stain on online gaming since day one. It will never go away; the only way to fight it is to accept and rehabilitate it. This is a nettle that needed to be grasped, and we should be glad that a developer as scrupulous and profoundly experienced as Blizzard - above all, a developer that cares as much about its games as Blizzard - has had the guts to go first.

You don't have to like it. But Diablo is the right game to do this with - and Blizzard is the right developer to do it.