Diablo 3 Preparation Part 1

   In the previous month i had made a voting poll asking you, the readers what are your plans regarding Diablo 3, and whether you will be playing the game or not. Well the poll didn't surprise me much as it showed a more or less a 70% of the population that is playing WoW will be dipping into the Diablo 3 franchise as well, and on top of this you will get the old Diablo fans that will be flocking in to the game.

   So this meant only one thing, i could have gone on and made a new blog about Diablo and it's economy, but seeing as how my free time is getting on the slim side i decided to throw in a few posts in which i will explain some of the tricks and ideas i got from playing in the beta, and hopefully help out anyone that is starting out to make some gold, but on top of that if they play their cards right they can earn some real money as well. So without further delays let me get down to the basics.

THE CLASSES

   Diablo 3 will have 5 different characters for you to choose from. The Wizard, The Witch Doctor, The Demon Hunter, The Barbarian and The Monk. All of these characters have their own specific game play style, but i won't get into how they play out as that really doesn't make any difference when it comes to making gold in the game. Well the real reason for mentioning this is because i want you to know what you will be choosing from the start up. What i mean by this is that the characters in D3 will be defined by the main attribute it will be using on it's gear, be it Strength, Dexterity or Intelligence and last Vitality.

   The reason why this is important is because the way the attributes work for different classes, Strength is what Barbarians will want, Dexterity is the sweet spot for the Monk and Demon Hunter while the Intelligence is what  the Witch Doctor and Wizard will want on their gear. So with this fact you might figure out that the demand for the Strength gear is going to be lower opposed to the other gear because only the Barbarians will want it, so if you happen to choose a Barbarian as your main character expect to find cheaper items for you on the AH and all the other gear you acquire while hacking and slashing that has DEX and INT on it you will have a broader buyer pool to sell it to.

THE ARTISANS

   In the start of the Beta for D3 there were 3 artisans, The Blacksmith, The Jeweler and The Mystic, but a few patches ago the Mystic got sacked so for game launch we got left with only two of them. The way the artisans work in D3 is you need to find them, then do a quest for them and then they agree to help you out, for a fee of course. Well in the Beta we saw the Blacksmith, and what he was capable of, and in the next post i will get into more of a detail on how to use him to make a hefty profit early on in the game.

   For now there is one thing you should know about the artisans, they will require gold to craft things for you , and they will require even more gold to level them up, so they are going to be the gold sink that everyone is going to have to drop in a lot of gold into to be able to level them up. What this means for us is that the demand for gold on the RMAH ( Real Money Auction House ) is going to be a lot higher in the first month or so when people are starting out, so if you have any intent on making cash from D3 you might want to get on this market early on, but then again i will cover this in the next post as i want to keep this more of a informational orientation post.

   As for the Jeweler, no one can tell you nothing because no one managed to see him because the Beta only allowed you to go up to level 13 and see about 1/3 of Act I, and the Jeweler comes later on in the game, so everything there is to know out there about him is simply data mined information, and information from Blizzard's site.

THE AUCTION HOUSE

   The Auction House in D3 is probably the most innovative feature in this game. Now what i mean is, D3 is taking a whole new approach in the gaming industry where they are offering the chance to sell your virtual goods for real cash, and all of that is legal and can't get you banned. 

   To everyone that has been playing WoW the layout of the Auction House should be pretty recognizable. There is only one thing though that is going to be rather unique about it, and that is the amount of auctions you can have up at any given time, and that is ten auctions on the GMAH and ten on the RMAH. Blizzard decided to take up this route as they wanted to make sure they keep the auction spamming at a minimum, and lets be honest it might be a bit on the low side but if this didn't happen can you imagine the amount of crap you would have to scroll through to find an item you like if everyone could post 100 items or even more, it will literally crash the servers from the overload.

   Another thing is that unlike WoW that had EU, US and Asia side servers,  and all of them had servers with their own separate auction houses, D3 is going to be on a Global scale and the only way the RMAH is going to separate people is by the currency they use to pay for the goods. What this means is the Auction House is going to be hectic and very fast. Just to compare it with WoW's AH, if you post all your auctions you might get 2-20 min of being the top dog depending on the server you are on, well in D3 you might be the top dog for about 5-20 sec, but then again that might be the time it takes for you to sell your item as the buying crowd is going to be a lot higher as well.

   In the next post i will give you a few ideas on how to take advantage of the Auction House, and how to make some gold by doing the oldest trick in the book, but for now i will leave it at this.

   Ok so this was the Intro into the D3 world, in the next post i will focus more on the how to make some gold and how to take advantage of the Auction House and earn some profit.

   For the full post check out Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 of the Diablo 3 preparation post.