Wasn't Global Play a thing from day one?

The Real Money Auction is now live.  Holy Shit.  The only thing that surprises me more than people asking for hundreds of (real) dollars for Diablo Items is that people are actually buying them.  And people are buying them.  I am shocked by the number of sold items that are showing in the RMAH.  This is going to ruin the gold auction.   Now anybody with a half-decent item is going to try to make a few real bucks instead of Diablogold.  Why wouldn't you?

I've been doing a little more research on the specifics of the RMAH.  If you are going to start selling things on this auction, make sure your Blizzard Account is aligned with a Paypal account.  If you simply have your RMAH proceeds deposit straight into your Blizzard account, that money cant be withdrawn and only used for making purchases on the RMAH.  If you have a paypal account, that money can then be cashed out and used for things like food, rent and other real world applications.  Paypal of course will take a cut, but I would still rather have the option of withdrawing the money instead of only having it locked in some Blizzard account.

This thing is going to be dominated by Chinese sweat shops in no time.

On top of what Bob said above, you don't want to list your item to go into the Blizzard Battlechest - you want your funds going to paypal.

To get in on the Auction House Gravy Train:

1) Log in to Battle.net, attach an authenticator to your account.
2) In your account payment settings add your paypal account.
3) In the battle.net account settings you want to add the SMS Protect security option, it'll send a verification code that you have to punch in and you can't leave that page until you receive the code. Currently, they must be getting hammered because it took 8 minutes to receive mine.
4) Log into Diablo 3, switch your auction house currency to USD (or whatever currency you reside in).
5) Click an item you want to sell, but don't just yet. Look at your items stats and attributes, and item level requirement.
6) Comparison shop, via search, for items similar to those of the one you want to sell off. This gives you an indicator of the current market value so you don't sell too high (not a bad thing) or too low.
7. Click your item to sell it, enter in your starting bid amount, and optionally enter in a buyout amount. Then just below that is a pull down menu that indicates where your profits go to, you can select the Battle.net account or your Paypal.
8. Profit.

So, who else has been stockpiling legendaries since launch? For the past two weeks, where opportunity arose, I've been buying up Legendaries for $5000 - $15000 gold filling up my second stash tab. So far made $20 dollars selling one belt of awesome, and 2 bucks on rare wizard wand. Not bad. Tried looking for more cheap legendaries, nope, not happening.

Dust is now settling on the auction house. At least that is the initial bout of crazy seen on the marketplace isn't for sale anymore. Did decently on my first couple of days. Paid off my copy and a quarter of the wife's copy off already. Now I'm doing a slow burn on the market, and it's not a race and its best to remind yourself of that, of trickling items off for $2-3 bucks a pop. Paypal listings cost a dollar, plus the 15% cut, so now I'm bringing in on average 1.70-2.50 a sale on items, it's not so much as undercutting everybody - it completely depends on what you're selling - but you do have to remember just how much someone is willing pay and adopt an app store mentality unless you're extremely lucky to find the rarest of legendaries or set items. Game isn't going anywhere, and buyers haven't dropped off yet, so now it's just a neat stream of daily purchases going into my paypal account.

Once you start playing with lvl 50+ people the quality of pub games increases. A lot. I played a game with a Russian wizard and we facerolled dudes in Act 2 Hell, including Maghda. We even made it through a fight with two elite groups of Sand Wasps (their affixes were a jumble but there was teleporting, molten, illusionist, waller, plagued among them) at the same time without dying. Whoever made it so health globes heal the entire party should get a pat on the back. He was getting gangbanged pretty roughly by the Wasps for a bit and I just jumped into a bunch of regular mobs and healed him all the way almost twice. Co-op is so much more fun than solo.

 

With my current equipment at lvl 55 I'm at 30k+ HP, 5k+ armor unbuffed (7,5k buffed) and 4k+ DPS. So I'm guessing I can get well into Act 3 without major upgrades.

 

I havent sold anything on the RMAH yet.  I have a number of good rings that I put out ranging between $5 and $15.  No bites.  Perhaps I was a little too ambitious with my pricing but what I was asking for was right in line with what everybody else was selling.  I have also noticed a dramatic slowdown on the gold AH as well.  No sales in the past 2 days, which is almost unheard of for me.  At this point I don't know why anybody would sell anything really good in the gold AH.  I guess you will always have those die-hards who are opposed to the concept of the RMAH, but other than that I would expect the top-end items to only be found in the RMAH.

 

I'm going to be interested in hearing your thoughts about inferno, specifically about a barb's survivability.  The next character I'm leveling is a barb and I was actually dying kinda routinely in normal level, ACT1.  It also took me a few tries to take down the butcher.  Up until that point I had only been using equipment that I had found.  After A1 I went the the AH and bought some cheap gear that gave me LOH and Vit and I havent died since.  Reading message boards it seems that Barbs are very gear dependant once you reach Inferno.  You don't really have the option of being a glass cannon like a DH or Wizard since you gotta be right in a mob's face to do much damage.  In other words you are going to be getting hit a lot more which means your Armor, Resists and Vitality are all going to have to be pretty high to survive I would guess.

 

I doubt this will change in Inferno. Equipment, equipment, equipment. And then some equipment. My aim so far has been to outlast mobs, not outdamage them. Of course I've been pretty lucky with the AH so I'm sailing smoothly so far but the signs are visible. It's all about surviving the beating. Even in Hell all my passives are survivability related. Three of my actives, too.

 

And one final thing. Learn to love Revenge. A barb without Revenge is unplayable.

I sold a decent amount on the gold auction house so far.  Haven't listed anything on the RMAH, but have seen some absolutely absurd items that made me drool there.  I won't be buying them, but more power to people if they get the $250 they're asking.

 

It is frustrating that they've had so much maintenance related to this launch though.  I had 3 auctions expire last night when they took the auction house down for a few hours.  It's getting to the point that any time they announce any sort of maintenance I'm just going to throw lowball bids in on a bunch of good items and hope they expire while things are down.

 

My problem with revenge, at least early on, is that it isn't procing a whole lot.  That's how most of my early deaths happened, waiting for a revenge option that never came.  I know from playing with A-Pat's monk that LOH is very important for any melee (in essence Revenge is one big LOH move).  After running (and running and running) around in Inferno these lasts couple of weeks with a DH, I want a class that can stand toe to toe with mobs.  My plan for my barb at lvl 60 is to be a life-leeching machine. 

My experience with a Barb has been very different in Nightmare and even Act IV of Normal compared to the early going.  It took that long for the skills and equipment to catch up.  Early on I had a fair number of insta-deaths and had to switch to a ranged setup for most boss fights.  Dying is fairly rare these days and I was able to pretty easily melee Diablo and every boss through Act III of Nightmare.  I'm looking forward to seeing how things progress through Act IV and on to the next difficulty.  I'm also pretty pleased I haven't had to hit the AH yet.

 

Doing maintenance, eh? That probably explains the crippling lag I was getting last night. It was literally ten minutes of clicking on stuff and nothing happening, then connection outages. Ah, the joys of being in Australia and on the Americas servers...

Yeah, I had fairly terrible lag last night too. Poor old DH would wait for a sec before vaulting. Also had a weird phase were I went half way through a zone with NO mobs in it, then they suddenly all started appearing.

 

In other news, I'm gonna experiment with a DH that uses no bow.

My barb did pretty decently using the same exact loadout Stelios mentioned earlier. Cleave with Rupture, Earthquake with running fire, Ignore Pain, Revenge with healing, and War Cry, plus the three perks. Up until the later half of the 2nd act in Nightmare my guy wasn't able to go toe-to-toe with most groups. As bob mentioned Revenge is a finicky bitch that can leave you hanging. I'd nearly get snuffed out surrounded by things and hard hitting elites. So I experimented with some of the skills I never bothered looking at. Namely Whirlwind and that Running/Speed skill. Whirlwind with the neato tornadoes was okay, but I ended going to Seismic Slam. The Running speed skill that leaves tornadoes in your wake, a fucking revelation. So my current load out now is Bash with fury bonus, Seismic Slam with extra damage, War Cry with regeneration/fury, Revenge with healing (should I ever get cornered), Running Burst with Tornados, and Battle Rage that drops health on critical hits.

Every elite and boss since then, I've generated fury with direct attacks or War Cry, and then I activate Maximum Speed and run circles around the groups, and with some distance lay waste to whatevers standing with Seismic Slam. I'm at level 52 and still rocking my level 41 armor.

tldr: I think you more fancier pants players call it kiting. Man, I'm such a fucking noob.

So A-Pat and I finally finish A1 Inferno after a couple weeks of farming, no problem.  Eagerly we jumped into A2...where we proceeded to get housed.  If A1 is slightly challenging, A2 is next to impossible.  There is a pronounced difference in the mobs you are fighting.  They hit twice as hard and have twice as much life, and I don't think that's an exageration.  In Act 1, my DH could sustain 2 or 3 shots before dying.  In Act 2 everything was one-shotting me.  Everything.  Even A-Pat's monk, who never dies with ample LOH gear, couldn't survive. 

 

The scariest part:  our gear is pretty good.  It's not top top end Legendarys, but it's far from terrible.  A-Pat and I have each spent millions upgrading.  But we were totally outclassed.  We took down 2 packs of elites right outside of town, each took us forever and both of us had significant repair bills after.  Then we ran into a Reflect Damage/Armored/Consecration/Mortar set.  After dying once we transported back to town, tails between our legs, knowing we had absolutely no chance of killing them.   

 

Now I'm not the best player in the world, but I know how to kite, and lay traps, and pull a trigger on a Xbow.  My DPS is good.  A-Pat is better than I am with his monk, he never dies and tanks really well.  But we had no shot.  To use a baseball referrence, Act 1 was the minor leagues, Act 2 was the major leagues, and we struck out our first 20 times at bat.

Edited by bob loblaw - 6/17/12 at 7:49am

I made it into Inferno. I'll fuck around for a bit but, for now, in anticipation of patch 1.03 I'll mostly spend my time leveling my alts and boosting my brother.

Yeah! Got the plans for the Staff Of Herding during a 5 NV stack Izual Hell kill.

 

Boo! Spent the rest of the afternoon re-running Leoric's Manor for the shinbone (that's supposed to be the easy one to get) and got nothing!

 

Yeah! It was really fun watching mobs suicide on me by my thorns damage!

 

Diablo 3 is a rollercoaster of emotions.

here I am still working on my main.. I have a lvl 42 Demon Hunter and Iove it...but not as much as the Witch Hunter I started.

 

I finished my staff and have upgraded it to Hell level at this point.  I couldn't afford to upgrade it to Inferno even if the plans were available to me.  I spent 2 1/2 hours getting the rainbow thing and was 2 hours into trying to get the gibbering gemstone when somebody in general chat said they were in a game with 3 openings and had just found the gemstone NPC.  The guy was nice enough to invite 3 of us into his game so we could all get the gemstone, didn't ask a thing in return.

 

That's right, something good happened in general chat.

 

I've been messing around with new builds as I became convinced that my main issue with death in Inferno Act 2 must have been choosing a couple of offensive abilities when I could have chosen survivability.  Ran through the back end of Act 1 twice with Bob Loblaw last night to get familiar with my abilities and was very pleased with my extra survivability (including living through them being cruel enough to put a treasure goblin right on top of the Warden spawn point, and the goblin also happened to run me into an elite pack while I chased him).  Bob logged off, I decided to run to Act 2 just to see how much my survivability would help.  Hit my first elite pack, died twice within a matter of seconds.  Logged off.

I havent experienced this myself because I am still at work, but it sounds like Inferno difficulty has been greatly reduced for this patch.  If this is indeed the case I'm not very happy about it.  I kind of liked the fact that I got my ass kicked in Inferno Act 2 and that I had to step my game up to survive.  Again, this may premature and it may still be insanely hard, but all indications are that things are much easier.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6457499/

 

Patch notes. 

 

• Elite packs (Champion/Rare) now drop an additional item for players with 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor, which is guaranteed to be of Rare quality
• Damage from monsters in Acts II, III, and IV in Inferno difficulty has been reduced

I guess it's a good thing we will be dying less because repair bills have gone thru the roof.  3k repairs AFTER EACH DEATH.

 

You have no idea how much this hurts me as a barbarian. OUCH!

 

Im powerleveling a barb now to use as my main because I enjoy the playstyle of it more than my DH.  You can get a decent block rate shield (25%+) for less than a million and a decent Legendary Helmet of Command for around 1.5 million (which gives an addition 8% to block).  Thats a 33% to block all attacks right there.  And if you can somehow get your hands on a Justice Lantern ring, that will get your block rate into the mid-40s.  That along with high vitality and good LoH would make a barb pretty tough to beat I would think.

 

I'm a few millions away from being able to afford these.

 

I finally assembled my Staff of Herding at least.

I'm still not sure when that switch comes along that goes oh hey, here's piles of money to afford that crap in the auction house. I've held off upgrading the blacksmith and jeweler. Still pulling in profits from the auction house. Grabbing items low, and then selling for dollars in the rmah. It was adorable to see some guy try flip an auction he bought off me, something I ended up flipping from gold auction house. A crappy, damaged, pair of boots with half-durability of its brothers - bought it off me for $5 bucks and listed it immediately for $250...when you can clearly see there are other better items available in the same league.

My only problem with the auction house now is selling items with reduced requirements. When that item is in your inventory, say a pair of level 38 pants, that has a reduced 5, it doesn't show up in the search function as a level 38. It gets lost among the level 43 pants in comparison.

So my new goal is grabbing reduced items from the gold auction house, comparable to level 60 stuff. Only way my guy can handle some of the more intense elites I've been running into. The level 50-ish stuff that got me through to the end of Nightmare just isn't cutting it in hell.

Popped back into the game today after getting my authenticator in the mail, and I have to say, I think I may be done for a while. I'm 50+ hours in (Act 2 Inferno) so I definitely feel like I got my money's worth, but I have to admit that I came away a little disappointed. Obviously Blizzard are still masters of getting the hooks in, and I'm a big fan of the mechanics of the game (I love being able to experiment with new skills without re-rolling), but it just felt liked I'd played so much of this game already that after the initial playthru and subsequent bro runs, I've just had enough. It didn't help that Acts 1 + 2 were essentially Tristam and Lut Gholein respectively, followed by a castle (woo!). Plus, the aforementioned tonal problems definitely rang sour. I wasn't expecting a good story, but part of why I liked Diablo 1 + 2 was that while it wasn't unique to the extent of, say, a Planescape Torment, it felt like a darker, grimmer fantasy universe distinct from the usual elves + orcs deal. Play this, I got the impression they were trying to capture that feel again, but in adapting an aesthetic that makes the game more friendly to the average system, a lot of that style is lost. That's not to say there aren't highlights (I love the look and powers of the Witch Doctor for instance), but I found the overall effect more jarring than the similar approach in Starcraft 2 (wasn't a big fan of it their either, but the original already had a more stylized look). It also doesn't help that while that game went out of its way to offer up a lot of interesting variations on the standard RTS mission, nothing in this game ever extends beyond "pick up thing, put down thing, pull lever." Which, again, was enough to get me through a lot of fun-filled hours with friends. I guess I'm just bummed because Diablo 2 and Starcraft were multi-year, 100+ hour staples for me back in the day, and while capturing that sort of magic again was probably never going to happen, nothing about this felt even close to that level of "holy shit, this is amazing." I'll certainly pop it back in for the inevitable expansion, but I just can't see myself dipping back into it time after time like I did with its predecessor.

 

As a quick aside, Steam is also exacerbating the problem significantly. I built a gaming PC in anticipation of Diablo and wasn't huge into the indie scene before that (nor was I planning to be), but between the Humble Bundles and the various other sales, I am fucking hooked. Don't get me wrong, I'll still bro it up with some Halo 4 and the like, but having all these different, weird experiences has kindled a little of the old pre-interent information overload magic of finding that random awesome game. And to be fair, a lot of shit ones, but hey, when it's less than a hamburger I can't really complain.

Player 'completes' Diablo III video game

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18532670

That's a bit unfair. Kripparian did a lot of work but he and Krippi were a team all the way. Krippi kicked ass tanking for him.

 

On a related note, "Holy shit what is the BBC doing reporting world firsts?" We've come a long way baby.

 

Personally now, I haven't had much time to give Inferno a good try with my barb. Been mostly fucking around with my alts. It's a shame that monks apparently aren't very good at the end game because they're superfun to play early on. Especially now that their skills got weapon animations.

Man I'm so out of it... I have no idea what any of that meant

 

I haven't played the game but I too was amazed to see it reported on the Beeb. Forgive my ignorance but what does it take to complete the game? Is it that monumental of an achievement?

 

Translation:

 

a.There were two guys playing. Kripparian and Krippi were their usernames. Kripparian was the "main" guy and Krippi the guy "helping" him according to the article. However that is not the case. Krippi's role was being the "tank." As in the guy that is equipped to draw a lot of the enemies' attention on him so that the weaker defensively but stronger offensively "DPS" (taken from damage per second) character can take down the enemies. Without Krippi around, Kripparian's job would have been much more difficult. 

 

b. A world first is the first time someone does something notable in a game, mostly used in MMORPGs. This was the first time anyone ever killed Diablo in Hardcore Mode in Inferno Difficulty. It is nominally the toughest thing you can do in Diablo. The first reason why this is so hard is the level of difficulty. Inferno is the highest difficulty level unlocked by finishing the game in the previous three difficulty levels. To give you an example of the level of difficulty, the Skeleton King, the first boss you fight has 1800 hit points in Normal level and 15.7 million hit points in Inferno. Second they were playing in Hardcore mode which means that once you die your character is rendered permanently unplayable. So you have to finish the game four times without dying once.   

Sweet Jeebus... and here I was complaining about how hard Max Payne 3 was. That sounds insane.

You have no idea.

Fuck me. Something tells me those guys are getting a call very soon...

 

 

Slowly soloing through Act 1 Inferno. Got me a nice and cheap weapon with some life on hit and a bunch of resist gear. I'm broke as fuck. Leoric went down without a problem but there are some elite packs that are pretty much, despite the nerf, a dead end for a solo barb. 40k of health, 12.5k of armor buffed and resists close to 200 and times come where I go down literally in a second. But I'm slowly going forward.

 

Thank Blizzard for the Enchantress though. By far the most useful companion. CCs like a motherfucker. It's a pity that the barb can't stop being an asshole towards her.

 

You need to bump your resists up to around 500+ min.  My barb is lvl 52 currently and I already have half his gear for when he hits 60.  Everything I have bought has resists on it...at least 50+ each item.  I've gotten pretty lucky selling items in the AH lately so gold is becoming less and less of an issue.  I don't know how much time you spend in the AH, but I would say its almost necessary to become AH savy if you are going to progress in Inferno.  You just don't find enough quality items on your own to properly equip your character.  Otherwise if you are having gold issues I would get some gold find gear and farm the bridge in A3 Hell until you are able to farm the crypts in A1 inferno. 

Completed Ac II this weekend; the last boss was the first time I died a couple of times until i figured things out, but it helped me see the reason for some of the changes to gameplay, specially the cooldown timer on potions and the health orbs; in the previous games, as long as you stacked health potions and evaded attacks for a while, you could take on anything; here, its more about skill and reflexes, which i guess helps make things more challenging.

Im making Diablo III my weekend game, along with Old Republic, which i havent played in weeks; weekdays will be set for the xbox 360.

I think I'm on the final mission of Mass Effect 3, but my game auto saved in a rather precarious position where I basically died every time it loaded. Frustrated with having to start the mission over (I was pretty far into it), and more content for that section of the game looming, I decided to set it aside until the "Extended Cut" DLC comes out. It was time to get reacquainted with Diablo 3.

 

Jesus what a fun game this is. I thought about rolling a new Barb through Normal, but ended up playing through Act 1 and part of Act 2 with my Nightmare monk. Act 2 really amped up the difficulty, and I was dying a lot, but I actually managed to craft a really good set of those brass knuckle things and find another in a drop. Those two weapons changed everything, and that's what I loved about Diablo 2. You're having a hard time and then you find a couple of bits of gear that help turn your game around.

 

Farming is indeed what I'm gonna do next. Because I can't sell anything in the AH.

 

It takes a while to understand what sells and what doesn't.  You're really hampered by only being able to sell 10 items at a time at 36 hours a pop, so you have to choose what you sell wisely.  Yesterday I had Diablo 3 up on my computer for about 10 hours, but only about 4 hours of actual gameplay.  The rest of the time was spent patrolling the AH.  I know that's not everybody's idea of fun, but I actually enjoy it.  I bought a 900k ammy and flipped it for 3.9 mil and I am kicking myself that I didn't ask for 5mil.  I've got a stock of items bought cheap just waiting to be put up for auction.  It's just like anything else, you gotta spend money to make money.

 

I started out farming A3 Hell just to build my bankroll, until I was able to do the Crypts in A1 inferno.  My DH can farm stuff relatively easily in A1 inferno because of the escapability.  A barb is a little different.  You gotta be up close.  So if you are dying alot in inferno you need to back out and farm Hell for a bit.  Especially considering the ridiculous repair bills these days...you will never make any money.

 

I'm actually going to be trying an interesting barb build.  In addition to high resists which is mandatory, I am trying to get all my equipment with life regeneration.  Im trying to get 2k+ life regen/ per second, which will be beneficial for long boss fights and tough elites that require some kiting.

Is Diablo 3 Worth getting? I just got a gaming computer and i started buying stuff on steam since they are having the summer sale, but i wanted some feedback before i go from $2.50 games to $60

I wouldn't recommend the game. It's a loot table slot machine and Auction House simulator with a swords-and-sorcery minigame attached.

Hmmmm, alright I might just stick with my steam sales and free to play games for now xD, thanks

You should get the game. Buy it up and play your heart out. It's so great. You just sit there on your ass clicking on things mindlessly. Once every couple of hours you get to watch a cgi movie cutscene. It's not until you beat the game twice do things get interesting, and then after beating it a third time, you can log into the auction house and give me your monies in the vain hope you too will join the pyramid to sell your e-junk to lesser players. There are so many layers of enjoyment to be had with Diablo. 1) You play the game seeing the stuff Blizzard has spent the past 8-12 years crafting. And then you are free to bitch about what a failure it is on any message board you choose, make sure you spout keywords RMAH, killed, farm, PVP, DPS, Kite, Chubby McNubby, Endgame 2) You don't have to play that Recetar game because you're doing it in real life; Capitalism, Ho! 3) With this experience you could write a thesis or essay on the socio-economic challenges that many a chinese gold farmer faces daily. 4) Buy life insurance, pick someone awesome as a recipient, play for a couple of days, keel over and die. Profit!

Or, Torchlight, woot!

On a less trolley tangent. It is interesting to experiment with the multiple classes, but really normal mode gets tedious fast.

I have eased up a bit on it lately. Slowly progressing through inferno on my main, farming and playing around with alts. But that only happened after 120+ hours of playing. I have played every single major Diablo clone ever and I have to wonder about people claiming it is inferior to any of them. I'll dive back in with the next big patch, for sure.

Normal and Nightmare are fun.  After that, have a good group or enjoy playing the Auction House.   I think that sucks, but other folks enjoy it, it's up to you.  It's an MMO, with all the things that go with it, shitty economy and farmers rule the game.  It can still give you a couple weeks of fun

Much appreciated guys! I'll take everything into consideration!!!!

I have tried to get into D3 but it hasn't been as great As I expected.