When Blizzard announced that it will include real world money powered Auction Houses in its upcoming Diablo III a lot of fans reacted angrily, accusing the company of only trying to create a new revenue stream for the game.


But the developers have said that their only reason for this new system is to give players even more items to play around, test, create and sell in the game.

During a panel at the BlizzCon event the developers spoke about their commitment to making items in the Auction House easy to browse and buy, with the user interface specifically designed for ease of use.

Depending on the character build a player use and the parameters he sets the search process will sift through the items that are put up for sale and allow gamers to pick the best fit for their current situation.

Full items will not be the only Auction House attractions, with players able to execute a salvage move on their weapons and armor in order to turn them into components and then move them up for sale, with those who buy them able to use blueprints to create unique items that they can use of again sell.

The ultimate aim, say the developers at Blizzard, is to create a workable in game economy for Diablo III while also making sure that a player has options linked to his load out at all times.

Another major change that the team working on the new role playing game is to make the upgrade done via a NPC random, again so that the variety of items in the game world is increased and more unique builds are available for use or for sale.

Blizzard has also said that players should not aim to hoard money from item trading but always look for new armor and weapons to buy in order to tweak their character and their experience.

---------- Post added 25-10-2011 at 03:48 PM ----------

Loot Balancing One Reason for Long Diablo III Development Process

One of the leading developers working on Diablo III at Blizzard has said that one of the main reasons for the long development cycle for the game is the need to get the balance of the loot system right.

Kevin Martens, who is the lead content designer working on Diablo III, told Gamasutra that, “That balance is honestly the main reason why it takes so long to make a proper Diablo game. The bulk of our work goes into tuning the game's loot drop system. There are so many parameters to alter, it can be dizzying. Even the slightest increase to gold drop can suddenly change everything in the game.”

The developers believes that the time to balance the game is well spent because it allows players to have an unified experience that they can share.

Martens added, “Even defining what 'super rare' means in the game changes when you scale to five million players. So even if we make a mistake with a 'super rare' item and it only affects 400 players out of 5 million, that still is 400 players who have a bad experience. It's really a big deal.”

The Blizzard developer has acknowledged that there are a number of other role playing game and even shooters, like Borderlands, which have managed to implement impressive loot systems but he says that the pressure of other people's success is a good motivation for the Diablo III team to do even better.

Blizzard has also confirmed that Diablo III is also being developed for gaming consoles, with apparently 3 people how working on how the game would look and play on the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3 and, presumably, the Nintendo Wii U.

Diablo III does not have a launch date at the moment but a beta stage has just taken place, which means a first quarter 2012 launch is a possibility.