Dual Wield : Stay away from my sweatshop

NOTE: Dual wield is solely my opinion, not my guild, not my parents, girlfriend (don't have one, anyway), not anyone, Sometimes I used quotes, sometimes I don't, it was simply the just cause of my trolling =))

My birth country, Indonesia is a haven for gold sellers and all forms of MMO or internet exploitation, the community are total hell since it's dominated by 15 year old kids and adults who exploited them to sell or buy in game currency, or sweatshop runner, ruining the community for profit, the sole reason why I used to never played an international MMO with my fellow countrymen (or women, which is still a myth)

But thanks to the internet, like-minded people have it so much easy to gather, from a thread created by my friend Kurogakure, Guild Wars 2 probably will mark the beginning of a new fresh and clean gamers from my country (even if it's just a fraction of the total hell).

Of course, like-minded is still like-minded and most of the local old-school gamer (which I prefer to call sweatshop employees) can never understand the urgency the community needs to stay clean, playing the game like it should, to pass time, to meet people, to gather for an event, or something without REAL CASH involved (unless they have cash shops). A few weeks ago my friend come into a clash with a hardcore sweatshopper, the sweatshop listed some of the most ridiculuous argument like: "How the hell should I pay for a game, if I can gather gold from it and sell it for REAL CASH PROFIT???"

Me: "Selling currency is illegal"
Sweatshopper: "Other people in other country do it too"

From the two lines of argument most people, even non-gamer can understand it was going nowhere, when people break the accepted law, they probably won't have a problem break anything else

I played MMO as a hobby, one of my hobby actually, something that defined by online dictionary as something that I did in my leisure time, outside of work, My friend also describing something like: "A chef can play online games for a hobby while professional game tester can cook at his spare time"

It was a completely different matter.

Apparently gold seller can't understand that, if a game is not profitable anymore they will quickly packs, sell out, and move into another one, they're not gamers, never was

So a gamer and a  gold seller is not even on the same boat, one wants a community, while the other wants community to buy from them (and they don't even own the game)

Sweatshopper: "Why can't I? The big company's making millions, why can't I make my own dough?"

In my country pedestrian walks on street, because the side pavements is used for personal shops, the analogy fits

All they want to say is: "Stay away from my sweatshop"

So Arenanet, please make your game free of gold seller and exploiter okay?

Diablo III Real Money/Currency Auction House: An Opinion

The most intriguing thing about Diablo 3 for me now is not the characters or even whether it has a good gameplay mechanic or not, but the feature of real money auction house which basically Blizzard's way to monetize player's trading legally while attempted to shut down the dreaded illegal Real Money Trading of a game. Basically as the name said: You trade virtual goods with real money currencies

The plan was revealed about a year ago on Blizzcon, and finalized some days ago, you can read the full disclosure here, short version: Blizzard will take some of your money, it's 15% from the price of equipment and @ 1.50$ for materials, gems, and other stackable commodities. If you want to transfer your earnings from battle.net balance to your bank/paypal account Blizz will take 15% from the total amount transferred

These ones below are purely my thought:

So if I have a stack (20) ex: iron ore (or any other crafting materials, I never played Diablo 3 and D3DB doesn't have any craft database up yet), sell it for $1 each, I'll get $20, blizz will take 15% of it so that's left me with $17, then I transferred everything to my PP account, Blizz take another swag of 15%, left me with $14.45, listing fees only deducted from the amount of my sold items and when my mats doesn't sell the listing fees will be returned to me.

I have $14.45 enough to cover my internet bill, or pay other subs, or I might left them on my battle.net balance so I can resub to WoW (UPDATE: apparently you can't buy subs with your battle.net balance since it's not listed here, thanks for samII to point it on Tobold's) imagine if I have rare longsword of something and I sold them for like $50, blizz will only take 1.00 from it and I left with about $41.225 when transferred, I can buy any X360 games!!!

and all I do, is play Diablo III!!! Of course this one is just a theory, but in my opinion Blizzard has just opened a virtually endless watering hole in which everyone can sell those waters, my line of work is mainly trading and I understand the law of supply and demand, but in this one the supplies are nearly endless so the price will become undercutting race between players because all you need is to have enough to pay the listing fees and when it didn't sold it'll be returned to you with the fees, in 48 hours, in just a short time you can arrange anything you want to sell or buy again, at those time you probably already acquired a legendary helmet because you're such an awesome player which you probably can sold at $100, probably...

But of course in my experience everything that involves a massive amount of money is always targeted, Blizzard needs to strengthen account security to prevent notorious hackers trying to get their hand on REAL money on battle.net balance, while in game adept Auction House Players will tried to control supply and demand with undercutting and overpricing. And yeah, players will always tried to exploit and circumvent any bugs and condition they've met, botters for example probably will rampage around while Diablo III is not a true MMORPG but it'll affect the amount of supplies, demands will become tricky since we already have stigmas that players who brought everything with real money currencies are considered exploiter and have instant gratification mentality, but in this one the instant gratification mentality is probably will be the best buyers =))

May 15th and three months after will be the test of this monetized system of Blizzard, will they gain profits or the system will be endlessly exploited and circumvented that it'll hurt Blizzard and the players themselves? Time will tell again I guess

Me? Oh no, I won't be playing it, beside having a stone age notebook the dungeon crawler genre kinda rubs me the wrong way, of course if I have the time on my hand (which is not) I'll buy it and roll a monk (or witch doctor), beside It'll be nostalgic too meet Tyrael again :)

Yeah, he's probably will still be faceless