Written by A lot of WoW gold bloggers have been chiming in about Diablo 3 lately, so I thought I’d throw my own views out there. The biggest thing, obviously will be to clarify my own personal position with the Diablo 3 gold-making community. Hopefully, you aren’t too disappointed by this, but I’m not going to have a position within the community. 
Here’s why:
The Diablo 3 Gold-Making “Community” is essentially an elaborate Pyramid Scheme
Yup, you heard right. While we don’t know everything about the D3 economy thus far, we have seen glimpses and I’ve seen enough to form that opinion. While there seem to be some similarities to the WoW economy, there are also some glaring differences. This means there will need to be some glaring differences between the 2 “communities” as well.
The most obvious difference is: $$$. The WoW economy is both free and fantasy-based. As such, a free, fun-based community has flourished around it. The D3 economy is going to be about RL money, plain and simple, so any “community” that pops up as a result will be about RL money whether they intend to or not. You can’t separate the two.
So where’s this “pyramid scheme” then? Well, knowledge is power, right? In WoW, the end goal isn’t worth anything in RL, so the knowledge used to get there doesn’t hold any RL value. In D3, any insider knowledge or anything that can be used to gain an advantage will have legitimate financial implications. As such, its value is also linked to its exposure. The things that make you the most money in D3 will see a significantly diminished value the moment you share them with anyone else. So, any blog or website that sells itself as offering tips, strategies, and secrets will essentially be shooting itself in the foot, and it’s readers’ feet as well, but exposing any information…
Unless, that information isn’t really all that useful to begin with. General, vague information will both be safe to share, but at the same time not very helpful for very many people. It will serve as bait, though. If it is compelling enough, people will take that plunge and risk their RL money at this latest opportunity to “get rich”.
The biggest opportunity I can see with the D3 economy is in taking advantage of other people’s mistakes or people that don’t really know what they’re doing in the first place. The “success” of the D3 gold-making community will be in generating as many of those people as possible and getting them active and interested in the D3 economy. The people at the top will be feeding their own businesses by increasing the pool of “average” gold-makers to feed off of. Any information they will be able to share will either become less useful once it is shared, or start off less useful in the first place. The best information you’ll find will be just enough to get you interested, but not enough to actually do much damage.
Based on that, I really don’t think a healthy D3 gold-making community is all that viable, and I don’t have much interest in being part of an unhealthy one, so I’m out. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll play the game. I just don’t plan on talking too much about it with people I don’t really know or have established trust with.
What does everyone else think? I’m quite interested.
-Kathroman
Some very valid points you’re making there Kat, there’s no realms in Diablo, the only difference will be the EU-US-Oceanic-… parts of their servers.
The moment someone releases some info on how to make decent cash it will have immediate consequences on the market, you should be very stupid to release any kind of info on a good deal, whatever it may be…
I will keep an eye on the blogs though, for the people able to think out of the box there will be money to be made, how much remains to be seen, there’s no way to even speculate about that.
Nobody knows the drop rates nor what prices things will go up for, but you can expect premiums for the rarest items.
This system is already in place for some time now, with some warcraft gold blogs. You can almost pinpoint the moment in time when that happened. And it’s exactly what you said : provide poor content, create artificial hype, make lots of noise without actually transmitting something of value. If you happen to have a gold guide to sell, then that’s even better.
Sad thing is, this will never change. Why ? Because it works. Because people are just like that.
But in my opinion a gold making community, will be viable. You have to think that some people are more interested in driving traffic to their blog/website. If such people will come across good tips, they’ll share – because that will increase their site confidence factor. People will return to the place that helped them. There will be new patches, new classes, new items always to be added. There will be times when you could safely release some good gold tips.
Also you have to look in warcraft gold blogs history for another aspect. At some point a notorious gold blog will release the bomb: “Dump the product X,Y,Z naow. The price will sink. Sell now”. Often times such statement is either intentionally induced, either the author is misinformed and didn’t do the proper homework. In any case, the waves generated in that said market, by that said famous blog, will always allow for a smart goblin, to speculate the moment and get some good deals.
A gold making community for D3 will be viable in my opinion, and it will me very interesting to watch it closely. Information and timing will be the real power.
Yeah, I’m not saying people won’t try and share information for the sake of it, I’m saying it’s going to be a futile effort. The real value in any of this information will be both time sensitive and limited by the number of people it reaches.
For example, if a “tip” will only work for 100 people, then once the 100th person finds out about it not only does the saturation ruin it for them and everyone afterward, it ruiins it for the first 99 as well. So, even if a blog is able to find that “sweet spot”, it’s in the best interests of the readers NOT to refer or recommend the site.
How any blog can expect to survive when increasing their readership and growth actually devalue their content is beyond me.
I agree with what you are saying Kammler. Anyone with half a brain wouldn’t post their very best real life cash making diablo 3 tips on their site. I’m assuming we will all keep that extra uber insider info all to ourselves. Until some other idiot breaks that news, then we can spill the secret info that we already new the whole time and were just protecting for self-profits.
Some stuff is just common sense that anyone will be able to pick up on once they get inside the game. Stuff like +Lifesteal gear and +magic find runes/gems are both going to be super sellers and in great demand. Anyone who played Diablo 2 should already know that.
I have talked with a few of the other Diablo 3 Gold and Cash Tips site admins and they all pretty much feel the same way you do Kamm. Give out basic tips and strategies, but guard the super secret knowledge for yourself until the beans are spilled.
I know that I will be working up Diablo 3 Gold Tip articles on strategy, farming, farming character creation and specs. With all of the modifiers and multiple combinations of gear stats, there won’t be a whole lot of the “buy this for cheap, and sell for more” type of tips since everything is going to be so different and rely heavily on random stat generators.
Exactly. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I have any problem with anyone’s decision to monetize their D3 blog – it’s their right. I mean a Real Money blog about a Real Money venture seems a logical process. I just think that there are a number of people out there who believe the Diablo 3 gold making community is going to mirror WoW’s – it won’t.
I also think there are some current WoW bloggers who either fail to realize or have undervalued the fact that their ability to monetize their site is largely tied to the quality of their site’s free content. I’ve already pointed out why I believe the quality of said content is in trouble, so I believe it will be extremely difficult to successfully monetize a Diablo 3 blog/guide.
Sorry! I called you Kammler twice, Kathroman.
No problem, I call myself all sorts of things.
You said: “…For example, if a “tip” will only work for 100 people, then once the 100th person finds out about it not only does the saturation ruin it for them and everyone afterward, it ruiins it for the first 99 as well…”. That might seem to be the truth on the paper. But wasn’t it what happened in wow so far ? Did that stopped us to make so much gold ?
Yes, pointing out a good tip will set the alarm for thousands of people who will rush do put it in practice. But I also know this:
- patience is a virtue
- people will make a poor implementation of the tip
- people tend to forget in time about a good gold tip
- the more good gold tips are out on the market, the greater the chance one person could not cover them all
You said : “…How any blog can expect to survive when increasing their readership and growth actually devalue their content is beyond me…”
Maybe they aim to gain more from what they could sell to their audience, rather than rely on what they can make in game ?
The WoW and D3 economies will differ in many ways. The biggest is that WoW is predictable, economically, whereas RNG was so much more of a factor in Diablo. In order to make consistent money, you’re either going to have to get lucky or find some reliable corner of the market to lock down. That information WILL NOT be worth sharing.
In WoW we also have over 500 unique servers and economies. I’d be surprised if there was anything even close to that number in Diablo. Sharing information in WoW just doesn’t carry the same risk and the stakes are also lower than they will be in D3.
The other big factor is going to be inflation. While Blizzard has obviously allowed inflation to run rampant in WoW (especially this expansion), inflation will be kept in check in D3 through the presence of another currency. Earning gold/money in Diablo 3 is going to be so different from WoW
Interesting article but I disagree that *every* blog about making real money in D3 will be simply a money-grubbing venture. I think that those who enjoy discussing making gold in WoW may have an interest in making real-money in D3. Sure the games will have their differences and sure there will be some terrible blogs/guide that will try to rip their readers off selling “tips”.
That doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for a place to discuss the D3 economy and making real-world money with D3. Those who aren’t interested in D3 or in the real-world money making side of D3 can simply ignore the D3 blogs. No one is forcing anyone to read these blogs.
I think you missed the point then. There isn’t going to be anything worthwhile to talk about. Bloggers will either end up ruining the quality of their content by posting it, or they won’t be able to post anything worth reading to begin with. At least not more than once, anyway.
The point is that in WoW you were discussing in-game currency, in D3 we’re talking about RL hard cash.
If you find something that makes you good $ would you share it knowing you will make less $?
I’m not saying you’ll get rich by playing D3, but if it can pay for my subscriptions and maybe a little extra i’ll be the very last to release any info on how i make my money, especially if its a nice niche market.
I guess you could compare it to Poker. There is a thriving community for Poker advice (both good and bad). These forums help bring people to the table with money in their pockets, while the high-rollers are taking their money.
Alternatively, there is the option of spreading disinformation (among sound yet vague advice) in order to profit from noobs following your recommendations blindly.
I came to the conclusion that it was actually a ponzi scheme. Similar theory though.
I agree that any information one might find to make money shouold be kept secret at all cost. Unless you8 can sell such info for a huge amount of real life money.
In anycase the economy is flawed right from the Start. The only thing that you need to renew in this game is gold. Gems and Items stay forever. Gold is a renewable ressource. Following that line money will become meaningless in a very short time. Once you max out your caracter and you max out all your stash and artisan and once you have all the gems you need, what will you need to buy? One extremly rare itme that only hard core gamer will ever see anyway? In order to have a good economy you need demand and I don’t see any demand in a long term life for D3. Unlike D2 when people restarted continously where gems and runes were used up and needed to be replenished there was demand, D3 has no such requirements. once a gem is in the game it’s in forwever. Once you have trained your artisan and your characters there is nothing left to use up ressources…
D3 economy was doomed from the start.