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Final Fantasy XI getting AH bid history, merit point changes, and more
Final Fantasy XI's March update is bringing a bit more user friendliness to the world of Vana'diel. A post on the game's official forums notes that the patch will allow combat and magic skills to be increased in Reive battles. Additionally, the amount of merit points necessary to gain entry into high-tier battlefields is being reduced. The game's auction house will feature new bid history options, too! Click through the links below to read further details.
MMO Mechanics: Balancing game economies
Most players won't need an economics degree to play an MMO, but strong mechanical forces under the bonnet still guide our actions in our favourite titles. Virtually every financial exchange can be broken down into an effort equals economic gain equation: We put in our hours, and the game economy churns out new gear or money. Since so many in-game actions financially reward players, MMOs have developed mechanics that attempt to curtail the inflation game economies usually see. Charging your character for goods and services, bind-on-pickup gear, regular destruction of valuable goods, and player-controlled auction house and farming systems all combine to keep the spiralling amount of coppers falling into player hands in check. In this week's MMO Mechanics, I'm going to look at some ways both sandbox and themepark MMOs automatically rebalance weighted economies by exploring the systems that restrict the free trade of goods and curb players' constant accrual of money. I'll look at how each system functions and how player manipulation adds a new layer of realism to game economies.
The Repopulation passes $100K, eyes traveling vendors
Another day, another stretch goal accomplished by The Repopulation. This time, the sci-fi sandbox passed the $100,000 mark and ensured that cooperative structure placement will make it into the game. Next up is the traveling vendors goal at $115,000. What's a traveling vendor? Well, it basically "allows players to mark themselves as a vendor at any time," Above & Beyond explains on its website. "While this flag is enabled, other players will be able to interact with them to browse and purchase goods which they have marked for sale without any player interaction necessary." There's a lot more to traveling vendors, but you'll need to click through the links below for full details.
The Daily Grind: Are you OK with auction houses?
You know, I really miss player shops in MMOs. I realize that the universal auction house is a concession to convenience that most players can no longer live without, but there's something to be said for local market economies and merchant autonomy when it comes to setting yourself apart from the crowd. Not to mention the fact that it's occasionally fun to take a break from the usual killing and looting and browse through a painstakingly furnished player storefront. What about you, Massively readers? Assuming you've ever played an MMO with player-run shops, vendors, and more realistic market systems, do you like those mechanics? Or do you prefer the auction house? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The players and the auction house
Like many, if not most, players, I regularly use the auction house to buy and sell items that I need or want in WoW. And, like many players, I regularly experience frustration in doing so -- either I can't find what I want and/or it's exorbitantly expensive, or I can't sell what I'm trying to get rid of! I'm not sure which scenario I'd rank as more annoying -- not being able to buy what I want versus not being able to sell what I want -- but I find the latter to be exasperating in a particular way, especially if I know that what I'm selling is something useful. I admit it: I get really frustrated when things I want to sell don't sell. Relisting is annoying, and if I'm trying to sell an item, it's because I neither need nor want it, so carrying it around isn't something I feel inclined to do. Part of it is wanting to make gold -- who doesn't, after all -- but in addition, those bag slots are space I need for other things that I don't want to sell, like transmog gear. Hence, I am forced to admit that I can sometimes be one of the people that player Kidja complains about in this forum post. If I can't get a buyer on the AH for something at the price I think it deserves, I will sell it for as under-market as I dare simply to get the goods moving.
Diablo III shutting down auction houses next March
The Diablo III auction houses are being prepped for demolition next year. Blizzard announced that it will be taking down both the gold and real-money auction houses on March 18, 2014, stating that "they ultimately undermine Diablo's core gameplay." The studio is giving a heads-up now so that players have enough time to prepare for the change, although specific details regarding the shutdown process are still forthcoming. This announcement comes as Blizzard has been making noise about an improved "Loot 2.0" system to put more of an emphasis on killing monsters for one's gear. The auction houses will come down at the same time, and after they do, players will be able to trade with each other only through the trade window. You can watch the developers explain their reasoning behind this decision after the jump.
Hyperspace Beacon: Winning at SWTOR's free-to-play
Disclaimer: This guide is not for everyone. If you already have a preconceived notion that the free-to-play model in Star Wars: The Old Republic does not work and that you will never play it, then this guide won't be of much use to you. If you feel that free-to-play players deserve the same benefits and ease of gameplay that subscribers do, then this guide is not for you either. And lastly, if you do not have a lot of time to dedicate to one MMO, then SWTOR's F2P model will not work for you. I have been skeptical of SWTOR's F2P model myself. I continue to despise the leveling process when a player has to start from scratch at level 1 and then attempt to level up a brand-new free character. However, I have a guildie who had existing characters at max level when he quit playing many months back. He recently returned to the game as a preferred member, and in the two months since his return, he has every unlock and about 3 million credits not in escrow, and he PvPs without buying a weekly pass with Cartel Coins. When I asked him how he did it, he jokingly replied, "Masochism." But then when he realized that I was seriously curious, he began to break down some of his methods and why they work for him.
Gold Capped: Sha Crystals are about to get a lot cheaper
WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make gold on the Auction House. Check out Basil's gold making podcast, Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! I hope you don't have too many Sha Crystals saved up for this upcoming patch. The 5.4 PTR has new epic craftable PvP gear on it which will likely disenchant into them, and some of these pieces will take very few materials. Six Bolts of Windwool Cloth, for example, will make you a nice disenchantable purple cape. The Sha Crystal from this can be turned into two Ethereal Shards, each of which can make three Mysterious Essences. Right now, the vast majority of enchanting materials are made through disenchanting gear crafted by tailoring or jewelcrafting. Jewelcrafters turn green quality gems into rings and amulets which DE into a lot of dust and a few essences. Tailors make blue PvP gear that disenchants into shards. Sha Crystals are only made on the daily cooldown that enchanters get, or through disenchanting epic gear obtained in other ways than crafting. Patch 5.4 will change everything. These methods will still work, but it'll get you more materials per bolt of cloth if you use the new recipes. Each purple Crystal will be able to be broken down into two blue Shards, which can be broken down into 6 green Essences. This new way will make more enchanting materials per cloth than the existing ways.
Security warning issued by Blizzard, World of Warcraft mobile auctions offline
Blizzard Entertainment has issued a security warning for all World of Warcraft players. According to the warning, the studio has been tracking an uptick in unauthorized logins via both the website and the World of Warcraft mobile armory application, with individual warnings being sent to any players who do not have an authenticator and whose accounts have recently seen unusual activity. Players in this group should check their emails for information about resetting and securing their accounts. Aside from encouraging all players to take extra steps to secure their accounts, Blizzard has temporarily shut down mobile access to the World of Warcraft auction house as an added security measure. Customer service will restore any items or currency lost as a result of this action. There's no information that this represents any kind of mass hacking, but it's probably best to change your password and get an authenticator if you don't already have one.
Gold Capped: How to handle undercutters
WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make gold on the Auction House. Check out Basil's gold making podcast, Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! I hear this all the time: "Every time I post anything, someone undercuts me within minutes." Luckily, there's a relatively simple solution to dealing with undercutters: ignore them. You don't ignore them hoping they go away, you ignore them because they aren't actually going to prevent you from selling your auctions. Think back to the last time you bought something from the Auction House; let's say an enchant. You search for the best enchant you can put onto the gear. If the lowest price is affordable, you buy it. If it feels too expensive (compared to what you've paid before or what you know the materials cost), you might buy the mats and ask friends or trade chat for someone to make it for you. You might instead look at the second best enchant for the gear if it's something you won't be wearing for long or you're not expected to always use best-in-slot enchants.
Pay-to-trade could change the landscape of MMO economies
If you've noticed that it's become more difficult to buy, sell, or trade goods in an MMO these days due to the sheer amount of player-bound items, you're not imagining things. A writer for Gamasutra penned an article in which he discusses the decrease of in-game trade and suggests that studios might be missing out on a great source of potential revenue. First, he acknowledges why studios have moved to restrict trade. It keeps the headache of managing an economy to a bearable amount, it cuts out duping and exploits, and it stems revenue losses that are caused by third-party traders. However, the author says that the hassle could be worth it if studios were smart and got in on the action by creating a pay-to-trade economy. "In the real world, we pay huge sums in the form of taxes and fees to keep transaction costs low," he writes. "So here's my question for developers: How much would your players pay you in exchange for the ability to trade?"
The Soapbox: Diablo III's auction house ruined the game
After his departure from the Diablo III development team, Game Director Jay Wilson released a statement that the introduction of an auction house "really hurt the game." While players predicted doom the moment the Real Money Auction House was announced, Jay argued that the gold auction house was equally to blame for the game's fall from grace following its absolutely stellar launch sales. I don't normally agree with what Jay has to say on Diablo III, but in this case he does have a very valid point. Diablo II was consistently popular for over a decade thanks to its immense replayability. At its core, D2 was a game about building new characters and gearing them up by any means necessary. Every enemy in the game was a loot pinata just waiting to be popped, and players farmed endlessly for a few sought-after unique items. You almost never found an item that was ideal for your particular class and build, but you could usually trade for what you needed via trade channels and forums. Blizzard claimed that the auction house was intended just to streamline this process, but when Diablo III launched, it was clear that the entire game had been designed to make the auction house almost necessary for progress. The fault here lies not just with the concept of an auction house but with the game designers. That's right: I'm here to argue not only that Jay Wilson was right about the auction house ruining Diablo III but also that it was his own damn fault.
Gold Capped: Never scan the Auction House again
WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make gold on the Auction House. Check out Basil's gold making podcast, Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! Have you ever scanned the Auction House with TradeSkillMaster (the best auction management addon, well worth the trouble of learning) and not gotten a complete scan? Maybe you see an error message and your crafting window starts displaying unknown materials prices, even though you can see the prices right front of you when you search? This is a bug that affects anyone on a realm with a lot of auctions (more than 42554, according to the TSM error message). In essence, the GetAll scan that's used to grab a dump of the AH in a few seconds can be incomplete if there are a lot of auctions. As far as I know, the traditional scans are immune to this, but they take a lot more time; like 20 minutes instead of 20 seconds. Even if the scans work perfectly on your realm, scanning is still an extra step that you have to do every time you want to update the prices before you queue up your crafting list. Luckily, there's a way you can get up to date price information without ever having to scan the AH again.
Proceeds from Diablo III auction house exploit to be donated to charity
At this point we all should be pretty familiar with what happened in Diablo III with the release of patch 1.0.8. The patch contained a bug in the way the auction house functioned that allowed for people to make lots and lots of gold - far more than they were intended to. The bug was fixed very quickly, but for the last few weeks Blizzard's been busy auditing both their code and the accounts of the players who exploited the bug. Late Friday evening, John Hight, the production manager for Diablo III, put up a post on the Diablo forums explaining in detail both what happened and what Blizzard has been doing about it. The actions taken seem fairly straightforward and sensible - Blizzard has evaluated the necessary code to check for any other potential weaknesses, and they have either banned or rolled back the accounts of players who abused the bug's existence. That seems pretty typical. But, what's nicest to read is the fact that Blizzard is taking any real money generated by these auction house transactions - including their own transaction fees - and donating them to Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. We have no idea as of yet what that amount might be, but it's certainly a nice gesture. The full blue post is after the break.
Diablo 3 Auction House back online sans bug, exploiters punished
Diablo 3's Auction House is back online after Blizzard took it down earlier this week, following an update bug that allowed players to duplicate trillions in gold. Blizzard found the bug, exterminated it, and will now donate all proceeds generated from the exploit to Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. Blizzard will not roll back the servers across the board, but will instead target specific accounts that used the exploit, banning or rolling back those users depending on their activity. "Only a relatively small number of players had the billions of gold necessary to exploit the bug, and only 415 of those players chose to use this exploit for personal gain," Blizzard Production Director John Hight writes in the Battle.net forums. As of yesterday, Blizzard had recaptured 85 percent of the erroneous gold and was working to track down the remaining currency.
Diablo III auction house down for 'at least another 24 hours'
Diablo III's auction house continues to be the stuff of legends. You may remember that a couple of days ago, the Diablo III auction house went down for a time due to a gold duplication bug that was being rampantly exploited by players. Thankfully, a patch was deployed in a nice, timely manner, and everything ended up all right. Or did it? Rather than performing a server rollback, which would set all Diablo III players back, Blizzard has decided to perform a complete audit of the transactions made on the auction house in order to find players guilty of utilizing the gold duplication exploit. Unfortunately, Blizz was a bit conservative in its estimate of how long the auction house would be down. While there's currently no new ETA for the auction house's return, a post by Blizzard CM Lylirra states that the studio anticipates the AH being down for "at least another 24 hours" while the audits are in progress.
Diablo III gold dupe bug fixed with no rollback
Oh Diablo III's auction house, you are the stuff of legends. Late last night, Blizzard took Diablo III's auction house offline to deal with a gold duplication bug that was discovered to be exploited by players. All gold trades were halted at the time, and Blizzard had a patch in place within 30 minutes. But it's the later update that concerned many D3 fans as Blizzard announced that it wouldn't be rolling back the server, but instead, dealing with each individual offending account on a case-by-case basis. This is more time-consuming for the dev team, but has much less of an impact on the community as a whole.
Diablo 3 bug sees trillions in gold duping, auction houses shutdown
Sure, we all like gold. But even the most gold hungry among us can see the problem with a bug that allowed players to accumulate trillions of in-game currency, which is exactly what happened with Diablo III's patch 1.0.8. As a result, the game's Auction House was taken down, and Blizzard is still debating what actions to take to correct the issue, but Lylirra posts on the official forums that roll backs won't be necessary. Lylirra - Auction Houses Temporarily Offline -- Update 12:00 a.m. PDT: At this time (and after careful consideration), we've decided to not move forward with rolling back the servers. We feel that this is the best course of action given the nature of the dupe, how relatively few players used it, and the fact that its effects were fairly limited within the region. We've been able to successfully identify players who duplicated gold by using this specific bug, and are focusing on these accounts to make corrections. While this is a time-consuming and very detailed process, we believe it's the most appropriate choice given the circumstances. We know that some of you may disagree, but we feel that performing a full roll back would impact the community in an even greater way, as it would require significant downtime as well as revert the progress legitimate players have made since patch 1.0.8 was released this morning. source I know it would be a pretty big blow to lose character levels or gear acquired legitimately, so if they can go after the actual accounts that used the exploit and remove just their duplicated gold, that seems like the best option to me.
Breakfast Topic: What is your Auction House money maker?
Lisa Poisso recently asked if player-made gear had become irrelevant. Many of the near 200 responses said yes. But The Godmother over at ALT:ernative disagrees. The 496 epic crafted gear market is alive and well on her server. She is making a healthy profit listing her creations on the Auction House. A jewelcrafter, an alchemist and a scribe are my high level characters, so I can't make high end gear. But my pockets are overflowing from the profits I make selling green drops from questing. While I've been able to sell uncommon gear throughout leveling my pandaren monk, the armor that has dropped while in the 80s has been particularly lucrative. In general, the weapons aren't worth spending the inordinately expensive deposit to list, but most of my other green drops are selling after one or two listings. I can make some profits from my gems, potions and glyphs, but nothing compares to the uncommon gear market on my low pop server. Now, I know people are reticent to give away their top money-making secrets. But there are enough servers with varying economies to make it relatively safe to reveal the items that make money for you. What works on your server may not work on another realm type or level of population. But I can still see where you may not want to risk it. Yet I'm asking just the same. What is your big money maker on the Auction House? Does it vary according to what days of the week you list it? If you don't want to reveal your secret, at least tell us if you have a big money maker or if you're finding it hard to sell things you used to be able to sell.
Gold Capped: How to make cheaper Enchanting materials
WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make gold on the Auction House. Check out Basil's gold making podcast, Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! One awesome side effect of the latest patch's new PvP gear is a way to make Enchanting materials much more cheaply. Since all the new gear is iLvl 458 blues, they disenchant into an Ethereal Shard. Sometimes two of them, although that is probably from the guild perk. By far, the most popular profession to use to craft this type of gear for disenchanting is Tailoring. Windwool Cloth is cheap and plentiful, and 20 of them make a single Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's piece that can be DEed. The best pieces to make are the ones that take 4 Bolts of Windwool Cloth: Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's Cape of Cruelty or Prowess Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's Cloak of Alacrity or Prowess Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's Cuffs of Accuracy, Meditation, or Prowess Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's Drape of Cruelty, Meditation, or Prowess After these, the materials start going up. That doesn't mean you can't use them, just that you'll have to live with a higher cost than all your competitors.
