For Obvious Reasons, Diablo III's Real Money Auction House Won't Launch On Time

Considering what a monumental pain in the ass it's apparently been for Blizzard to keep their servers running in the wake of Diablo III's launch and subsequent massive influx of players, it is perhaps no great surprise that other projects related to the game are suffering as a result. In this case, it's the real money auction house, a feature that was originally scheduled to go live on May 22, but now has been delayed for the foreseeable future.

According to a post on Blizzard's forums, the servers have generally been running smoothly since last night (and if my Twitter feed is to be believed, that's accurate). Still, the amount of manpower required to ensure those servers stay up evidently made the thought of launching the auction house next Monday unpalatable. Blizzard has no immediate timetable for when the auction house may finally go up, but promised to update players soon.

Elsewhere in Diablo III issue land, the same forum post acknowledges a bug where some players are either not receiving in-game achievements correctly, or not having them save between logins. The community manager who made the post said that Blizzard was looking into the issue, and would update as soon as possible.

Always online gaming, people. Wave of the future.

That's not surprising

But I want gold.

I posted some shitty magic helmet on the gold AH just to see how it works. Now I know, so I'll just go back to playing the game.

And I hope it is a short future :/ but not likely tho

I still can't fathom how with the multi year experience of running WoW and launching of Star Craft 2 they are not dealing with this better.

I can't wait for some idiot to pay triple digits in cash for some helmet and laugh at them.

I said I will never buy anything for real money, but I never said I wouldn't sell anything!

Loot farming, HO!

Someone tell me how Blizzard's plan of forcing you to play this online does anything good for the consumer at all?

Not buying this. It's broken. I'll give Torchlight 2 a chance though.

Sigh... these trash-on-Diablo posts are starting to get really fucking old.

it is my personal theory that this thing will never come to fruition

@ThatPrimeGuy: You're just jealous of my sweet, new helmet... :P

Who cares, the gold AH is up.

The idea that I can potentially make money playing this game is kinda cool, even if it's a paltry amount.

So, first they demand online connection to avoid people cheating on gear for the auction house, preventing players to connect and not enjoy the game one bit - and then Blizzard have to delay the auction house that put them in this spot in the beginning?

Blizzard? World of Warcraft-Blizzard? What is this? Head up your ass and ass backwards month?

@n8 said:

Sigh... these trash-on-Diablo posts are starting to get really fucking old.

i absolutely agree

@depecheload said:

Someone tell me how Blizzard's plan of forcing you to play this online does anything good for the consumer at all?

Not buying this. It's broken. I'll give Torchlight 2 a chance though.

It prevents cheaters. That's something good for the consumer. It also prevents people from going "but I totally spent like three months playing this guy to get him to hell mode and now I can't play him with friends? I do nots understand why my single player character cannot be taken to an online mode? I are confused and now I will rages!" and make no mistake, there would be just as much rage about that as there is about these launch day problems because people, as a whole, are idiots and have become so spoiled and cannot comprehend things like that anymore that they would throw just as much of a fit about it. There could also be other benefits that I don't know about. So there, some benefits for the consumers and for Blizzard to not have to deal with idiot people. And Blizzard not having to deal with idiot people is a benefit to consumers because it means they can put their efforts to more worthwhile things. Like people getting their accounts hacked because they refuse to use proper security measures when dealing with their accounts.

For obvious reasons, Diablo 3's Metacritic score is below 4. 
 
LAWL

@FateOfNever said:

@depecheload said:

Someone tell me how Blizzard's plan of forcing you to play this online does anything good for the consumer at all?

Not buying this. It's broken. I'll give Torchlight 2 a chance though.

It prevents cheaters. That's something good for the consumer. It also prevents people from going "but I totally spent like three months playing this guy to get him to hell mode and now I can't play him with friends? I do nots understand why my single player character cannot be taken to an online mode? I are confused and now I will rages!" and make no mistake, there would be just as much rage about that as there is about these launch day problems because people, as a whole, are idiots and have become so spoiled and cannot comprehend things like that anymore that they would throw just as much of a fit about it. There could also be other benefits that I don't know about. So there, some benefits for the consumers and for Blizzard to not have to deal with idiot people. And Blizzard not having to deal with idiot people is a benefit to consumers because it means they can put their efforts to more worthwhile things. Like people getting their accounts hacked because they refuse to use proper security measures when dealing with their accounts.

I cannot imagine that there isn't a better way to handle that though. It's utterly pathetic.

I've put quite a few hours into D3 so far with no issues. It's definitely not broken. Online games pretty much universally have issues in the first couple of weeks. They get ironed out and people forget about them.

@n8 said:

Sigh... these trash-on-Diablo posts are starting to get really fucking old.

Because Diablo III launched totally fine, amirite?

@murisan said:

I said I will never buy anything for real money, but I never said I wouldn't sell anything!

Loot farming, HO!

lol i agree, though ive been buying some sweet barb gear on the gear for gold auction house recently and i might stick with that.

@Aetheldod said:

And I hope it is a short future :/ but not likely tho

people said the same thing about steam when it launched.

now its "the savior of PC gaming"...

@depecheload said:

I cannot imagine that there isn't a better way to handle that though. It's utterly pathetic.

They could have handled it by giving options for online characters and offline characters, but just like Starcraft 2 they want to eliminate as much piracy as possible, so online is your only option. Any other reasons they give for it are secondary to preventing people from stealing it.

On this story, I did get the achievements disappearing bug, which was really annoying. I'm not sure how many I've already gone past that haven't popped back up. Not real worried cuz I'm sure I'll play thru with all classes, but still slightly bothersome. And another symptom of their problematic online requirement.

Just like the dudes said on the podcast, as much as it might irk me that I have to play a single player game with a constant connection to Blizzard servers, all of that disagreement wouldn't have evolved into all of this outrage if the thing just worked.

So much whining about Diablo 3. I have stopped caring.

The game is awesome, as long as I can play they can take all the time they need. Since yesterday the game has been working fine for me.

@lockwoodx: No its not. The user score is below 4 haha

That's a meaningless score and its not a legit metric when all they're doing is complaining about how the game was released rather then judging the game itself.

The game itself is fine. The way they are handling DRM is what's bad- that's not the games fault. And yes, this goes for any game that uses terrible DRM (although there are worse ones, imo, then "always online DRM")

Somewhere in the world, there is a guy who had planned to support himself exclusively through Diablo III auctions. And that dude is PISSED.

I laughed, because it's true.

I've put quite a few hours into D3 so far with no issues. It's definitely not broken. Online games pretty much universally have issues in the first couple of weeks. They get ironed out and people forget about them.

@Paul_Is_Drunk said:

Somewhere in the world, there is a guy who had planned to support himself exclusively through Diablo III auctions. And that dude is PISSED.

I laughed, because it's true.

And that person is Matt Kessler.

His continual denials will only show his true intent.

@CornBREDX said:

The game itself is fine. The way they are handling DRM is what's bad- that's not the games fault. And yes, this goes for any game that uses terrible DRM (although there are worse ones, imo, then "always online DRM")

The DRM in this case is inseparable from the game so I think that does make it a legitimate criticism of the game itself. If DRM makes the game unplayable, that's a big deal.

It's a shame about the auction house but i'm currently playing the game and it is a great game so far. Hopefully potential buyers dont let this sway them away from a really good game.

@Paul_Is_Drunk said:

Somewhere in the world, there is a guy who had planned to support himself exclusively through Diablo III auctions. And that dude is PISSED.

I laughed, because it's true.

And that person is Matt Kessler.

His continual denials will only show his true intent.

@Veiasma said:

@Aetheldod said:

And I hope it is a short future :/ but not likely tho

people said the same thing about steam when it launched.

now its "the savior of PC gaming"...

I think you quoted from this week's Bombcast almost word for word. Congratz.

"For Obvious Reasons, Diablo III's Auction House Won't Launch On Time"

The Lord of Darkness is not pleased.

@Aetheldod said:

And I hope it is a short future :/ but not likely tho

people said the same thing about steam when it launched.

now its "the savior of PC gaming"...

@laserbolts said:

Hopefully potential buyers dont let this sway them away from a really good game.

No, we'll leave that to the constant online connection the game requires instead ;)

@CornBREDX said:

The game itself is fine. The way they are handling DRM is what's bad- that's not the games fault. And yes, this goes for any game that uses terrible DRM (although there are worse ones, imo, then "always online DRM")

The DRM in this case is inseparable from the game so I think that does make it a legitimate criticism of the game itself. If DRM makes the game unplayable, that's a big deal.

@Ujio said:

@laserbolts said:

Hopefully potential buyers dont let this sway them away from a really good game.

No, we'll leave that to the constant online connection the game requires instead ;)

Oh yeah I forgot all about that. Bummer for people without a constant connection. Well if you have constant internet then don't let this sway you.

guess I will need to wait a little longer to make my millions playing video games

I like the always online connection, hopefully it'll motivate people to get a better fucking connection.

@Veiasma said:

@Aetheldod said:

And I hope it is a short future :/ but not likely tho

people said the same thing about steam when it launched.

now its "the savior of PC gaming"...

One thing to keep in mind though is that in order to get from "they want me to install WHAT to play Half Life?" to its current state of acceptance, Valve has made a fair amount of concessions with regard to letting people play offline and whatnot. I'm not saying that Steam's offline play system is perfect, but the willingness to bend on this kind of issue helped them in the long run. That's my understanding of it, at least.

Achievements have been kinda janky. I got the Scoundrel follower achievement without getting the Templar one. And I'm pretty sure some others cheevos popped twice .

@NewfieBullet said:

I like the always online connection, hopefully it'll motivate people to get a better fucking connection.

The thing is that in this case, it's not the players' connections causing the problems. It doesn't matter how fast your connection is if Blizzard's game servers are down.

game won't even let me buy it, and i tried super hard last night. the screen for credit card purchase just sat there loading forever.

good way to stop impulse purchases... Bravo Blizzard.. Bravo!

Might want to emphasise the "real money" bit, I was confused at first.

No big deal, the game's great, the external stuff is just extra. I'm a little cynical about the whole thing, but I still wouldn't mind making a few quid. The game already represents great value, all the more so if I can pay for some of it through playing the game.

Who am I kidding, I'll never make a penny, but it was a nice dream while it lasted.

And despite the server issues and always-online despite playing single-player thing, I've played 30-something hours already, and it impresses technically more often than it disappoints; which is saying something week of launch.

It should be noted the auction house is up and functioning fine. The real money payment option is the only part turned off.

That seems a little unclear in the article (at least as I read it).

@Koobz: I do say it's the real money auction house in the article, but I just tossed it into the headline to make sure it's clear.

The worst kind of DRM, no player modding, queues, lag... And all so Blizzard could get a cut of an auction house where people can blow their paychecks on valueless virtual items. Fan-TAS-tic way to turn around my willingness to buy one of your games, folks.

@Dark_Lord_Spam said:

The worst kind of DRM, no player modding, queues, lag... And all so Blizzard could get a cut of an auction house where people can blow their paychecks on valueless virtual items. Fan-TAS-tic way to turn around my willingness to buy one of your games, folks.

I have no problem with Blizzard getting a cut from the real money auction house. Its their way of getting in on people who arguably abuse the system to make money. I do have a problem with lag. I'm playing single player, my enemies shouldn't be jumping who like a cokehead who just stumbled upon his boss' stash.

@lockwoodx said:

For obvious reasons, Diablo 3's Metacritic score is below 4. LAWL

Of course it is, it's a popular game with slightly irritating flaws for people to latch on to.

I continue to wonder why that site even keeps user scores.