The Three Hundredth Spear: Item Analysis

The key to selling an item on the auction house is understanding how to value the item.  To value the item you have to be able to pick out the things that players want.  Here is a great presentation that goes into the topic of item valuation among a lot of other things.  Markco, who formerly made a fantastic WOW gold guide, has been talking about Diablo 3 with Sixen.

Initially this seemed like a bad Legendary item which would never sell.  But that opinion may have been created by the failure of my first item up for auction on the RMAH.  After listening to Markco and taking a second look The Three Hundredth Spear has a really nice stat and may be worth selling after all.  Let's take a look at the item, and discuss how to use it to best effectiveness.

Diablo 3 RMAH Experiment Day 2

Are there buyers?  Yes and no.  There are buyers for level 60 gear.  ONLY.

It was pointed out on /r/diablo that trying to sell anything under level 60 is pointless. It seems they are correct.  My level 42 Legendary did not sell for the $75 buyout price, nor the $60 asking price.  Theories of arbitrage tell us there is a price that people would be willing to pay.  The only question is, hoe low is that price?  It seems like bad legendary items will not pay for my copy of Diablo 3 after all.  Well at least not a single such bad legendary.

The item was re-posted for a $29.99 buyout.  It's doubtful it will sell.  Next stop $14.99.  Perhaps we should cut to the chase and just put it up for $4.99...  But lets play it out and see if we can get someone to buy it for more.

On the other side of the auction house I have been raking in the gold using old WOW techniques.  Even before leveling my barbarian to 60 I started bidding on level 60 Magic Items.  Buying at a certain price point and salvaging the items yields a nice profit.  There is basically a constant supply of such items as most gearing is done with rare or better items.

This illuminated a key point in my mind. You have to learn how to buy something in order to know how to sell it.  My last post was basically a 'guess and check' experiment.  It was my first data point in learning how to sell things in the RMAH.

At this point 3 legendary items have dropped.  Level 42 Armor, Level 44 Weapon, and a Level 55 Spear.  Basically crap.  Why?  The market is only interested in level 60 items.  Just like WOW, Diablo 3's economy will suffer from late game, or level cap issues.  Most players will want to spend money at the top level for better gear.  This means the economy will be relatively flat.  If you don't have THE best item, you cannot command prices anywhere near the top.

This will also mean that all those $250 valuations we see will be coming down quickly in the near future.

Diablo 3: RMAH. Are there Buyers?

Personal stuff

Diablo 3 RMAH fact and speculation after the jump!

Having passed series 6 and series 63 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts says that I can sell people investments in mutual funds.  However, over the past 6 months I've learned that working on comission is not for me.  So I'm looking to work for New York Life Investment Management in Customer Service.  Fortunately that job requires series 6 and series 63 licensing.  My future and the future of this blog is unknown.  At this point it's a waiting game until NYLIM goes through the interview process.  Until then I have a few clients that need some financial goods and services to tide me over.

From a game design point of view, a small Ma game development company likes one of my game concepts, and wants to work on it.  This is a loose deal, but means actually making a real game prototype with someone who knows what they're doing.  I expect no profit from this, but look forward to starting a real game and giving it a go.  (Well another go).

So in the past year I've started two businesses, and two businesses have failed.  This is encouraging.  At this rate I'll be a successful entrepreneur in 2 years (or 4 more failed businesses, which ever one comes first)!  What better way to celebrate then with some speculating in Digital Goods!  Maybe D3 can be business #3.  That brings me to Diablo III!

Boston Indies 01/16/2012: Demo Night

Some excellent games making their debut at Boston Indies.

For example:

The Look is fun, and fresh.  Art is done by Luigi Guatieri, a talented new comer to the Boston Scene.  Check out his blog and portfolio.  Unfortunately I did not get to meet or talk with the creator of the game, but the mechanics are really interesting.  There was a deep creativity to the game mechanics.  The pace of the intro and explanation is pitch perfect to have you learning new mechanics, but playing cleaver games at the same time.  It's quite possible that the game is based on a whole genre of mechanics that I know nothing about, or it's possible the games creator is just that good.  This game looked like tons of fun.

Also 82apps.com has a new prototype/demo of a game based on New World Colony.  It's still a work in progress and there are no official statements yet, but it gets under your skin.  Very difficult, but very fun.

Stricter Comments...

Someone has decided that this blog makes a good place to post spam back-links to their products.  I've turned on higher levels of security to prevent comments which don't help people from being made.  Unfortunately that makes is a little harder for people who want to use the site to leave a comment, but it means that it wont get overrun with spam.

Overgrowth

This game recently came to my attention via Reddit.  You many have seen Lugaru on the Humble Indie Bundle.  Here is a link that is a two for one: a discussion of Overgrowth via Indie Game: The Movie.  The video describes what they have been up to better then I can.

The development team has done a lot of things right during development of Overgrowth.  Check out Wolfire Games and you can read blogs on their opinion of open development.  More than just talking about development of their own games, the blog has 'design tours' of other games.  They discus the game from a development standpoint.  They are really post mortems of other peoples games.  There is much to learn from Wolfire Games, and fortunately they are will to openly share just about anything.  If you are developing your own game, drop them a line.  Ask them a good question and I bet you'll get an answer.

D3 Gold Experiment

My previous hypothesis is that each 1K of gold is going to effectively become it's own market due to the buying behavior of the players.  1K will have the highest purchase frequency.  2K lower frequency.  10K the lowest frequency.  There could be weird spikes in demand or supply at price points that correlate to gold values that players need to spend to purchase upgrades (the stash for example).

My first test of this hypothesis was to create a few auction to see what happens. 2 1k auctions at a fairly high Blizzard Buck (temporary place holder for real money in the beta) value.  1 2k auction at a slightly lower rate then the 2 1k auctions.  It would be more cost effective for the purchaser to buy the 1K auctions.  Now this doesn't really prove all that much, because there is a system behind the scenes which makes it so that if someone asks for 3K they would get all my auctions (odd numbered values are why I think 1K will sell most frequently).

Can I login to check the status of these auctions?  Unfortunately no.  Error 37 blocks my way.  I have no idea what that means...  Just that it prevents me from logging in.  I should find out tomorrow (Monday morning). So you may not even see this sentence.  Perhaps I'll just have some results.

--Update--
I can view the auctions now.  Two of them have sold, one of them has not.  Unfortunately as this is the beta, the 'Completed Tab' of the AH reads 0 for all information.  There is no way to know right now which auction sold and which one didn't.  The total number of Beta Bucks has increased to 66.  So that's working...  But nothing else is.