If you have been following my Tweets, and likes on Google Plus you’ll notice that Diablo III comes up frequently.  It is going to get a lot of my attention when the game comes out.  Why is that?  The Real Money Auction House (RMAH).  Having play World of Warcraft for many years the thing that kept my attention the longest was the economy of the game world.

The RMAH really excites me because it means that I can attempt to return real money from playing Diablo III.  I don’t have lofty goals such as quitting my day job.  But I want to enhance the fun that I have playing D3.  My goals for the RMAH are simple.  1.) Recoup the cost of the game.  2.) Attempt to make some profit (any amount will do).

–Update–

A few weeks after making this post, I received a Diablo III beta key!  Woot.  This happened to arrive during the week in which I started studying for my Series 7 exam.  Boo.  Why Blizzard?  WHY!?!

My first play through was with the Wizard.  Which was quite enjoyable.  Will most likely end up being the character that I play the vast majority of the time.  Second play through with the Witch Doctor, which was ok.

The Auction House is really wonky  at the moment.  I made blizzard bucks by simply flipping my first 2000 gold.  Posting it for a high (but not outrageous price) and then buying it back at a lower asking price.  I made 1.65 BB on my first transaction (fee’s included).

My initial thought is that buyer’s behavior is going to make each 1K gold amount it’s own market.  There is going to be a frequency of purchase associated with each level of gold.  The higher the gold amount the fewer people are going to want to purchase at that amount, and therefore the 1000k market will be fast, with little premium.  While each successive thousand will have a lower frequency of trade and therefore a higher premium.

And that is going to effect how you buy and sell gold.  The possibility exists that you might be able to arbitrage between the gold amounts.  For example you could buy at the 1000 gold level, and resell for higher amounts at the 2000, 3000, 4000 amounts with an added premium.

This is merely a hypothesis at the moment.  The beta is extremely shaky at the moment and it’s very difficult to regularly check on auctions or even get into the game.  Markco has asked that I research the auction house fee’s, but unfortunately I haven’t posted more then the weekly low cost trades.  Once I can do some more research I can test this idea.