Skip to main content

Diablo III to offer cash auctions, can’t be played offline

Image used with permission by copyright holder

MMORPG titan Blizzard has announced new information about the developer’s highly anticipated Diablo III title, and it’s sent the gaming community reeling. There are some big changes coming to the third major installment of a franchise that’s been hugely popular since its 1996 birth.

First, players can now officially buy and sell in-game items for real money. Diablo III‘s auction house will include both in-game and real life currency counterparts. Interestingly, all of the items in the auction houses will be listed by players who found them while playing; Blizzard won’t list any extra items which may give more stability to the auction economy. Blizzard plans on charging a “nominal” listing fee, although the exact price has yet to be decided, as well as taking another small cut when the item is sold. Both charges will be the same for any listing, not percentage based. Players can either deposit their money into their Blizzard account or cash out with third-party services for an additional fee.

Recommended Videos

Partly influenced by the new auction house, Blizzard has decided to only allow Diablo III to be played online. While this has proved shocking to some, Blizzard argues that it’s the only way they can be sure that people aren’t cheating. With real money on the line, it wouldn’t do to allow someone to level up extremely quickly by cheating offline before signing into Blizzard’s servers. The option to let players have separate offline and online characters was nixed by Blizzard, who deemed that players were unlikely to want to put in the effort to level up two characters. While that reasoning might be suspect, forcing players to only play online does eliminate one problem: piracy. Blizzard will now be able to authenticate every user who plays the game, which may mean a push to online-only gaming becomes more popular.

Finally, Blizzard has expressly prohibited game mods. Both the Diablo franchise and Blizzard games in general have a history of allowing modding, from custom auction house searches in World of Warcraft to advanced editing abilities that can fundamentally alter gameplay in StarCraft 2. With no offline option, there’s no place for gameplay experimentation, and Blizzard won’t allow potential advantages in the auction house with automated searches.

Photo via PC Gamer

Derek Mead
Former Digital Trends Contributor
We need to start having real conversations about AI in gaming
Copilot Quake II game.

AI has become a dirty word across almost every discipline over the past few years. As big corporations keep pushing this technology forward, a vocal resistance among creatives, critics, and passionate communities has risen up in opposition. While every creative medium is at risk of AI influence now, gamers are particularly sensitive about this technology sucking the creativity and human element from our beloved medium. Even the mere mention of AI being used in game development triggers a massive backlash, but we need to start being more nuanced in how we talk about the ways AI should and should not be used. Because, like it or not, AI is going to become more ubiquitous in gaming. We can't keep talking about AI as though it is a black-and-white thing. It is a tool, and like any tool, there are ways it can be used appropriately.

The question we need to ask ourselves now is, when is it ethical to use and what crosses the line?

Read more
Mecha Break is the closest I’ve felt to piloting a real Gundam outside Japan
Key art for Mecha Break.

In 2015, in a mostly-empty arcade in Fukuoka, I slid into the pilot seat of a Gundam.

I pulled the door down, watching as it seamlessly merged with the rest of the wall and turned into a display of my surroundings. As I pulled the earpiece down, the radio crackled to life as other pilots greeted me through comms.

Read more
Still shopping? Amazon Prime Day deals going strong into day 4
We're bringing you the best Prime Day deals throughout the sales period
Best Prime Day Gift Card Deals

It’s the fourth and final day of the longest ever Amazon Prime Day event, and if you thought the best deals were behind us, think again. Amazon’s stretching this year’s event across four full days (July 8 -11 ) which means price drops are still rolling in hot, with fresh discounts landing on everything from big-name tech to everyday essentials.

There have been stellar savings so far, with the AirPods Pro 2 heading down to $149 as the best saving we've seen.

Read more