If you aren't up to date on the recent
RMAH changes with Beta Patch 13, please get acquainted with them before reading this post. There's also a post from last night with a list of ALL changes to the entire game, including the
Rune Skill system.
Now, everyone I've read is focused totally on how the RMAH is going to effect Sellers. I've seen several excellent arguments for why the absence posting fees is a very bad thing, such as the fact that now players can get into undercutting wars with one another with no consequences. I'd like to stop you from panicking by reminding you that there are already restrictions in place which prevent you from canceling and quickly re-listing auctions. There is a time period (it has changed almost every Beta Patch) that you must wait after receiving an item before you can sell it. I am not 100% sure if the wait applies to your own cancelled or finished auctions, but I believe that it will by release. That basically solves the no penalty undercutting war that so many are worried about.
In case you aren't aware of what I mean by an undercutting war, pretend that you have a shiny sword that you are listing for $10. I go on and post my shiny sword for $9. You see that I have undercut you and promptly cancel your auction, then re-list it for $8. I see your clever undercut and respond by re-listing my own for $7. This goes on and on until we reach the $1.50 minimum for auctions.
That sounds like a doomsday disaster scenario for the auction house, unless of course Blizzard implements a system like I have suggested.
With regards to gold, crafting materials, and other commodities, Blizzard is likely going to take a 15% cut of each completed auction instead of enforcing a $1.50 minimum. Since you can't really get a good feel for your competition with commodities, it shouldn't suffer from the same rampant undercutting that non-stackable items will face. That's my humble opinion anyway.
(EDIT: For those who got into Beta last night, please comment with the new system mechanics for gold and commodities. I wrote this post just a few hours before the new patch went live. Thank you!)
There is something to worry about with regards to the $1.50 minimum price threshold. Since stackable items are priced PER item (or 1,000 with the case of gold), each item must be worth at least $1.50 to sell on the RMAH (assuming the $1.50 is enforced for stacking items). What happens if gold doesn't sell for $1.50 per 1,000? It won't be selling at all! This is the only real concern I have, and I hope that the $1.50 minimum will only be for the total amount of money for posting instead of the per item cost for commodities. That way I could post 3,000 gold for 50 cents each and have the total sale be worth $1.50. If Blizzard doesn't do something, and attempts to get people to pay $1.50 minimum per 1,000 gold, it just isn't going to sell. Will this hurt the economy? I'm on the fence about it and it's really not going to fit in well with the rest of this post, so I'll leave the discussion for another day. Other items that stack will just sell on the gold auction house if they aren't worth $1.50 in this hypothetical scenario.
Getting back to the topic at hand, keep in mind that players can only really play 10 markets per auction house at once... MAX. If they wish to double up on certain markets, like posting varying amounts of gold in different quantities or multiple pieces of the same non-stackable item, then they take away their ability to diversify. These limits, coupled with waiting periods before re-posting items, make me believe that constant undercutting will be a very small issue.
Now for the fun part: I'd like to discuss a method for taking advantage of a little fact that no one seems to be discussing at the moment. Buyers have no restrictions on the RMAH. Sure, once you buy an item you cannot re-list it immediately, but who said anything about re-listing that same item. Follow me for this one, it's pretty cool.
There are going to be vendor purchasable items for a set amount of gold. For our purposes, let's pretend that magic items which salvage into Subtle Essences sell for 500 gold from the vendor. Let's also assume that the price of gold is approximately $1.50 per 1,000. With these conditions, we know the following important fact:
For the purpose of obtaining Subtle Essences from Salvaging, we can safely buy any comparable magic item on the RMAH for cheaper than $0.75 or on the gold ah for cheaper than 500 gold.
But wait, there's still another way to grab Subtle Essences! We can just buy any Subtle Essences going for cheaper than $0.75 or 500 gold each. I'm obviously assuming that you will be able to sell stackable items for less than $1.50 per.
Next, we need to find an item which people will pay top dollar for on the RMAH that can be crafted with Subtle Essences. Maybe that's a rare helm* that everyone knows is the best helm in the game for someone leveling from 13-20 or something. Whatever the case, our team of expert gamers at
Diablo 3 Gold Secrets does the research and finds a helm that most people want to buy while leveling. We want the helm to appeal to a lot of different classes, so we can focus on a few stats which we know everyone wants. Maybe those stats are Vitality, Gold Find, and Magic Find.
*Rare items like helms take more than just Subtle Essences, such as Fallen Tooth. In this example, I've taken them out to keep the numbers easier to digest. You could technically rely on randomly getting Fallen Tooth from salvaging purchased magic items or figuring out the right price to buy them out at directly.
You probably know the next step, which is that you now just craft away, salvaging any helms which aren't going to sell very well. No wait... why salvage them when you can give selling them a shot? This would be an interesting debate, since you will hurt your ability to diversify if you sell several helms at once. You'll also affect the supply and demand of the helms, which brings your cost down. My recommendation? Only sell the absolute best helms you end up crafting.
What do you do with the rest that weren't really worth attempting to sell? You Salvage them and sell the parts or reuse them on more helms.
So you're probably wondering what's so great about this strategy. First off, it takes advantage of the fact that you can modify items through salvaging even if you just purchased them. You can't resell them immediately, but you can certainly salvage, craft, and instantly sell off the finished product.
Day trading is going to be a hard thing to pull off in Diablo 3, unless of course you take advantage of the fact that you can have an unlimited number of purchases to then craft items for the purpose of reselling.
What do you think of my little loop hole strategy? It's really more of a Shuffle then a loop hole, but it made for a better title, hehe.
Seriously guys, if you're on the fence about joining the
Diablo 3 Gold Secrets Guide + Forum, you really need to make a decision soon. Once Diablo 3's release date is announced, I will be incrementally increasing the price. Right now, you can lock in permanent guide access for $7 which includes 6 months of free forum time. How much are you saving by taking advantage of this deal early on? A whopping $64. If you wait until just before release, you'll be paying for it big time. This is your fair warning! That being said, thank you so much to the dozens of people that have already purchased the guide. Your support and involvement in this new community goes a long way!
