As probably everyone knows, Blizzard is introducing, in Diablo 3, a Real Money Auction House feature.The intent is to give Diablo 3 players as many options as possible to enjoy the game, RMAH being the option to sell / buy Diablo 3 items with real currency.
There are two options available when an item is sold in RMAH : first, the player can transfer the money earned into his Battle.net Balance and second, the player can transfer the money earned into his PayPal account.The difference is that once the money are in the Battle.net Balance they CANNOT be cashed in, and can be used ONLY to pay for services / items offered in Blizzard store.Also, additionally, there is a CAP for your Battle.net Balance (200 euros / 250 $).
The second option is what many future Diablo 3 players are interested in : CASHING IN the money earned in RMAH.How this will be done will affect the item pricing in RMAH, because the seller will have to pay, first, a fixed fee for his sold auctions, secondly, a fixed fee to Blizzard to transfer the money to PayPal, thirdly, a fee to PayPal to transfer the money to his card / bank account, and fourth, a fee to his bank to, FINALLY cash in.Ofc, there is the fixed fee to list an auction, but there will be a number of FREE listing auctions, so i did not took this into consideration.
So, in other words…there will be MINIMUM prices in RMAH.We do not know the fixed fee for succesful auctions, nor the fee to transfer the money to PayPal, but we can assume that they will be quite high, because Blizzard intent is to have only very expensive items in RMAH and crap shit on Gold AH.
I can only speculate on those fees, but can probably assume that the fixed listing fee would be 1$ or 1 euro and probably the same for a succesful auction.Due to the fact that a number of auctions will have no listing fees, I will add only 1$ / 1 euro to this calculation.Now, for transferring the money earned, Blizzard will apply a fee…that might be fixed or a percent, but most likely will not be under 1$ / 1 euro.So, up until now, we have 2$ / 2 euros in fees.Add the PayPal fees to transfer the money to your bank, probably no less than 0.5 $ / 0.5 euros and then the fees to cash in from your bank, probably also around 0.5 $ / 0.5 euros.
So, about 3$ / 3 euros will be paid by any seller BEFORE he can cash in.Well…this means that the minimum price for an item to be WORTH selling in RMAH will have to be at least 4$ / 4 euros, so a seller have a 1$ / 1 euro profit.In theory only, because if an item is worth ONLY 4$/ 4 euros, this means there will be A LOT of those items…which means COMPETITION, which leads to UNDERCUTTING, which leads to NOT WORTH to sell that item in RMAH but sell it in GAH.
I, personally, expect no less then 10$ / 10 euros for the LOWEST, and probably not rare enough item to be listed in RMAH.But not even 10$ / 10 euros will really WORTH list an item in RMAH.The items in RMAH must be really realy rare and really pricy, something around 30$ / 30 euros and be found once / week or even once / month.
Also, the items listed in RMAH must be used for at least 3-5 months before the next upgrade, otherwise it will NOT worth 30$ / 30 euros.
Blizzard expects to sell around 3 million copies of Diablo 3 in first year, which means like 3 million players, players that will pay 60$ for a copy.How many of those 3 million players will use RMAH to BUY items (because this is what we really want to know) ? Well, before speculating, we must think at HOW MUCH would a potential buyer to spend AND how often?
I think that a potential buyer will probably spend real money in RMAH once – twice / year and probably no more than 100$ / 100 euros per YEAR.It is NOT a huge ammount of money tbh, it is like 8-9$ / 8-9 euros per month.BUT, how may will do it? I think that 5-7% of players will spend real money to buy stuff from RMAH.
Out of 3 million (in first year) 5-7% represent 150,000-210,000 players that can potentially spend 100$ / 100 euros per year, which means 1,5 million – 2,1 million $ / euros per year.This only speculation, because, really, 2 million $ / euros per year it is not far from the truth.
Out of those 3 million players, probably max 1% will be succesful traders in RMAH and will split the BIG part of those 1,5-2,1 million $ / euros, probably like 80% of them.So, like 30,000 players will split 1,2-1,7 million $/euros, which means like 40 – 70 $ / euros per YEAR.
Something looks very wrong here…50 $ / YEAR ? What could be wrong in this calculation ? The percentage of players who might spend money ? Probably not, it is a GOOD percetange.The ammount of money they might spend? Probably yes, but not much more than 100 $ / euros.Maybe is the percentage of succesful traders?
It is most likely a combination of the above.50 $ / euros per YEAR is not enticing anyone to “professionally” use RMAH.If anyone wants to gain nice money out of RMAH, he won’t be happy with LESS then 300 $ / euros per month, which will come down to VERY FEW people, probably 0,01% or even less.
Luck and TIME will play a BIG role in RMAH money making.Not many will have them, and “working” 10 hours / day to make some cash will probably mean at least 10 $ / euros per day, otherwise is NOT worth it.
There will be people who will use real money to purchase Diablo 3 items, and there will be PLENTY of people who will spend much more than 100 $ / year in RMAH.Lots of people BELIEVE that there will be A LOT of sellers in RMAH and the items will be like 5 $ / euros.
They are completely wrong.There won’t be many RMAH sellers (once the limited free auctions are gone, you will have to SPEND real money to list your auctions again), there won’t be many items for sale ( only very very rare ones and probably big piles of gold) and the items will not be cheap as many believe (well, hope :D).
But RMAH will be a success, for both Blizzard and for the players, being sellers or buyers and will worth using it.
Peace,
Bozzor, Gold Multimillionaire.