Why it will be possible to earn money playing Diablo 3

I was out with a couple of friends yesterday and the topic wandered into D3 and the Real Money Auction house.

I started laying out my plan of generating an income through playing the game when one of my friends interrupted me and shut down the entire idea with the words “Noone will make any money of the Real Money Auction house.

A bit stunned I asked him to explain himself and he stated, “no gamer is going to want to spend money on something they can get through playing the game themselves”.

Now this is not the first time I have heard this argument when talking about making a living off Diablo 3, but it was the first time I heard anyone being so dismissive of the idea.

And so incredibly wrong as well people have been making money of MMORPG's since they were first introduced to the gaming community and that is why you will be able to make money off the Real Money Auction house. Don't believe me? Check out these examples

Ultima Online was the first really successful MMORPG with 250.000 subscribers in 2003. And with all those subscribers came a bustling digital items market.

Julian Dibbell is a freelance journalist with balls of steel. In 2003 he decided to quit his job and go into the world of Virtual trading to earn enough money to pay his bills every month just from what he could earn buying and selling online goods in Ultima Online. His book Play Money follows his attempt to make it big in the virtual economy. Not only is it a really fascinating book to read, however it shows that already back in 2003 with the MMORPG genre in its infantile state, it was possible to make money from playing computer games.

That is a 9 year old example you say, well sure, but it is a good one. The next example comes from D3s little brother Diablo 2. The game is 10 years old and still now in 2012 there are multiple pages dedicated to selling in-game items for real cash. Just as an example on one of them you can buy a 10 Max dam, 49-69 attack rating, 45 life great charm for $3.48. Yes that is more than a cup of coffee would generally cost at Starbucks and this is a game that has been out for 10 years, you would think people had, had enough time to grind for the item themselves if they really wanted to?

Unfortunately it is quite hard to find any numbers on how many items are sold in DII on a monthly basis, since the practice is not permitted by Blizzard Entertainment, however I bet you that unless it was quite lucrative still, there wouldn't be as many pages out there offering the service. You can also have a look at this poll to get a bit of an idea on numbers of people purchasing virtual items for real money. While the sample is not the biggest and while they might be a bit skewed as this is people who are on a Diablo related forum and as such probably more hardcore gamers than the average player, it is still interesting numbers. If we are to believe this poll then about 20% of players has ever bought items in Diablo using real cash. Surprised?

For another proof that it will definitely be possible to make money off the Real Money Auction house, you just have to look at World of Warcraft. On a daily basis players are getting hacked or running in to bots when playing. Why? So the goldfarmers can feed the never ending demand for gold sold for real money.

Last example for the day is League of Legends, World of Tanks or any of the many other free to play and micro transaction based games.

These type of games are hugely succesful and even if the items you can purchase are not offering any benefits, players are still buying. In League of Legends for instance you can buy skins for your character and the only purpose of these are the bragging rights it offers to have enough dough to throw at a computer game.

In Diablo 3 most of the items you will be able to buy and sell will have a tangible influence on the gameplay (better damage, more magic find, more money) and that is why you will be able to make money selling through the Real Money Auction house. When it all boils down to it, people are lazy, even in games created for leisure, people do not want to spend more effort than they need to.

There will be plenty of people buying gold, items, dyes and recipes. Especially if the PvP part of Diablo becomes succesful, but even if it is only moderately good, people will buy, shop, purchase and all the other lovely words merchants like us love to hear. And best of all, this time around it will be legal for players to go through with these sales and a supported system created by Blizzard themselves to sort out the sales. This means people who were previously too scared to get scammed will also start buying items for real money.

So there you have it, yes it will be possible to make money playing Diablo 3, will it be possible to get rich doing that? Now that is a whole other question, but I will be damned if I don't give it a go at least!