ipaqi

@happypup70 said:

@ipaqi said:

@Tennmuerti: You misunderstood my point. My post isn't here to say that Activision-Blizzard is doing something wrong - it's here to speak on the amount of power Activision-Blizzard has on the Auction House market, which will, very soon, be dealing with actual money.

Do they have a shotgun to your head. Are they forcing you to buy things off of the as of yet unlaunched auction house. Have you actually seen the RMAH in practice yet. I have seen many conspiracy theorist's out there and every argument they have boils down to the one you are making now. The phenomenon is quite common. There is a deep seeded need in humans to posses and share secrets. When real secrets are to plain many people create them. They become convinced by them and without any evidence they believe them. It makes that person special. They believe they know more than anybody else. It doesn't have to be logical. They rarely make sense when applied to Occam's razor. They usually make some amount of common sense when shined in the right light. My point is you should be unconcerned about the possible power of a video game manufacturer taking your hard earned dough and start living in a world of facts. When they are doing what you speculate they might be capable of doing than you have a reason to speak. Right now you are making noise to hear the sound of your own voice.

Dude, are you even reading what I'm writing? Whether you decide to mark me a loon, or actually listen to what I'm saying, what I've been trying to say is that there's a great deal of power in ActiBlizzard's hands right now. They've got a market fully under their control, and they can most likely assert that control whenever it would suit them, and in whatever way it would suit them.

All I'm saying - all I've been saying - is that there's a lot of power in Activision-Blizzard's hands here, whether or not they elect to use it. I'm not trying to incite people against ActiBlizzard - I actually think they've built this brilliantly so they can choose whether to manipulate the market or not.

I'm not trying to Nostradamusize this - I have no foreknowledge of the future or of the mindset at ActiBlizzard. But, much like you seem to be, I am an analytic thinker. I am able, through analysis and deduction, to see potential for what might be done given a certain situation.

I believe that where power is given to anyone, people need to analyze what can be done with that power. If there's anything we have to have learned from the past few years is that many people have no qualms about running markets into the ground, any economic field left unchecked for long enough is going to cost someone money, and Activision has had a good few occasions of running their own workers into the ground and firing them then and there.

Of course I'm concerned with giving Activision a completely profitable market to play with. But if there's one thing you (and the other people who posted with an alternative opinion to mine) got completely right, it's that for now, there's probably no reason for Activision to intervene. It's quite possible that they'll never find need of it. But if there's any one company in the industry right now that can and will squeeze blood from a stone, surely Activision is it.

Personally, I find blizzard's handling off the situation nigh-unforgivable. With all of the virtualization and automation software that is surely available to blizzard,

@Tennmuerti: You misunderstood my point. My post isn't here to say that Activision-Blizzard is doing something wrong - it's here to speak on the amount of power Activision-Blizzard has on the Auction House market, which will, very soon, be dealing with actual money.

@YOUNGLINK: Then read the rest of the comments. There are people here who've added some pretty good, concise points to what I said.

@emergency said:

If you mean purely redistributing who gets the high valued items that makes sense, if you increasing the amount of high valued drops then you'll just devalue then. It seems like a whole lot of effort for Blizzard to go to and honestly doesn't sound like something they'd ever get up to.

I'd never put anything past a company as big as Activision-Blizzard. Much less with Kotick's penchant for making remarks that hint towards a rather anti-consumer attitude.

Also, yes, I did mean 'purely redistributing who gets the high valued items'. Flooding the market with a lot of one object is also possible, but only as a means of stabilizing the market in case of a bug or something to that effect.

@emergency: You missed the point entirely. If my theory is correct, the people who might do what you say are the people who'd hack the game, not Activision-Blizzard. That's why the DRM is so stringent - so that AB wouldn't have to worry about external forces changing the markets unfairly, dropping the values of items and hurting AB's bottom line.

Because, if my theory has merit, AB wants to keep that power entirely to itself. Whether they use it or not is irrelevent - the point is that they have that power to do with what they will. And real people's real money might be at stake.

@tescoveeYes, the query overhead could be rather large, depending on how specifically they'd want to build it, but it could also be a relatively minor overhead, again, depending on how they'd want to build it.

@MikkaQ@MikeGosot Compare this possibility to how CCP made EVE Online's economy work. They are almost totally hands-off, making the in-game economy relatively independent of CCP's financial needs. If what I theorized is true, then this economy's entire supply and demand channels could theoretically be controlled and funneled by Activision-Blizzard in however way they deecided.

@alternate I don't believe what I'm suggesting could be the case is actually illegal. I think if we took a look at the ToS and EULA, if there's any text at all regarding the issue of how random drops is handled, it probably says something to the effect of "Activision-Blizzard maintains all rights as to managing the distribution of in-game items to players."

I think blindly trusting any corporation not to do the utmost it can to feed its bottom line naive to a fault.

But, again, this is all conjecture and theorizing for fun's sake :)

@Turambar: Again, not accusing. I've got no facts, just a theory of what could happen.

I believe ActiBlizzard would be foolish not to take advantage of this situation, especially considering they need somehow to recoup the loss of funds from WoW subscribers. Blizzard's Activision's most valuable property, but in order for that to remain, they need to keep raking in the dough.

All I'm saying is how easily the system COULD be taken advantage off, not unilaterally declaring that this is what AB are doing.

Hey, I said it was a theory. If the DRM, etc. works as I've theorized, it's at the very least possible.

Besides, conspiracy theories are fun!