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by huckfinnaafb
5168 days ago
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The difference being that Diablo 3 has an in-game real-money market, and more people playing the game means more people putting money into that market. The same strategy has been applied (successfully) with Team Fortress 2. This is not a new idea, either. Free to play but in-game real-money purchases have been going strong with casual games since it became easy to send money over the net. I'm not saying it will happen, but it's not an impossibility. |
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Casual game examples cannot be applied to Diablo's model. They are between the game makers and the users (which is more similar to Blizzard selling their items for WoW).
Diablo 3 is unique because it's facilitating transactions between players, while taking a cut. Hold up, it's not the same as TF2 either. TF2 items are pure cosmetic, novelty. Items in Diablo will effect the avatars and in turn, effect other people as well in terms of game play. One can truely buy their way up, legally.
Another aspect is consider people owning multiple accounts. How many of your WoW friends/guildies own multiple accounts? Because of the nature of the game, there are obvious benefits to have multiple characters online at the same time. How many accounts does a TF2 player has? There's no reason to have more than 1 account because there's no unique player avatars, there's no attachment, no profession limits, no character limits. Giving away free TF2 accounts is different from giving away free D3 or even WoW accounts.
Each D3 account also have a limit on how much real money balance (Bnet dollars) it can carry. So if a person wants to deal in more money or more character slots (and there will be alot of them), they need to get another account – more money in Blizz's pockets.
The point is different game mechanics, different target audience have different approaches. What works in one may not work as well as in another.