Quote:
Originally Posted by Free Ben Hur!
This is what I just don't get about what Blizzard are doing. Not only do they not have any apparent guiding philosophy for this game and are pretty much making it up as they go along, the development path they now are (momentarily) enamoured with is fundamentally and severely flawed. The lock down of trading of account bound items and the shutdown of the AH is a slap in the face of anyone who has spent a single loonie at the real money AH. The only people these changes benefit are people that don't have jobs or go to school and can play DIII 20 hours a day. Not only that, the nerfing they've done to key weapon attributes, like life steal, have made my monk (240k dps unbuffed, 460 full buff) a scrub that can barely compete. It's unbelievable how badly they've messed this up. 
Rant off. |
I disagree with everything you've said here.
First, the RMAH shutting down between expansions is the best time to do it, and is not a slap in the face at all. Consider that any money you've spent at the RMAH would've been useless anyways with the release of the expac. Blizzard understood that while a small minority of players love looking for deals on the AH/playing the AH game, the vast majority of people prefer finding stuff in game. The removal of the AH and buffing of drop rates was probably the best thing that ever happened to the game.
The only people these changes benefit from are the people that don't have jobs? Are you kidding me? I played ~1 hour a day back near release. I never had enough gold to actually buy anything decent on the AH. I never found anything that would let me survive in inferno as a witch doctor. My DPS when I finally quit was approximately 20,000 and that was after spending what little gold I had on upgrades. I never found a single upgrade personally.
Now? I played the same 1 hour a day, and I'm already up to 50,000 dps, and can actually play through torment 1 and progress through the game. Frankly, considering you have 460k dps buffed with enough specific gear to use a completely broken and nearly exploitative build (lifesteal), it's pretty clear you are the person that played 20 hours a day.
Funny though, the 20 hour a day player is still going to benefit from these changes - with the fact that things are BoA, as mentioned it's extremely hard to complete sets. The top players will be able to farm for these sets, and be far better than casuals like me, who will have a mish-mash of legendaries and rares, but at least I can actually play the game and have fun, rather than using 6/9 blue items, all of which were purchased off the AH.