Hearthpwn

If you've played World of Warcraft, or simply watched videos about it - You've likely come across the Auction House in one way or another. I was reading Iksar's AMA this week and Solem mentioned an idea about allowing users to sell cards from their collection for real life cash, i think that's cool and all but also, adding an auction house to hearthstone would probably not only be easier to implement, but would keep the flavor of the game, since it is after all set in the Warcraft universe. Here's how it would work (imo)

 A New Icon in the main menu:

Here's a mock up menu I made:

Players could choose a card from their collection that they don't want, and put it on the auction house for a any amount of gold or dust between 100 - 10,000. They can also set how long they want it to be on the auction house, the choices would be 8, 24, and 48 hours. After that, if the card hasn't been purchased by another player - It will be re-added to their collection and a notice would appear in game where the usual notifications pop up (bottom left) 

If purchased, the funds would be added to their account, of course.

Yay or nay?

As much as I'd love to have a neat feature like this, you would undoubtedly run into issues with bots, fake accounts and selling that doesn't jive with Blizzard's rules in other games.

You’re definitely thinking outside the box, I’ll give you that. However, that will never happen. It directly competes with and reduces profits from the economy that HS created and manipulates.

The economy has never gotten cheaper, even when it has appeared to. The duplicate rule saved us from reopening the same legend, which was immensely helpful, but it was necessary to make the economy work with the addition of two legendaries per class and a tenth class. 

Back to your idea, the auction house would reduce the grind for cards/dust while also making monetary transactions outside of Blizz. The way it is now is how they want it, all transactions are between Blizz and consumer and there is no value outside of owning a card. This is such a profitable system, it was closely mirrored by mtg arena.

Well, there are ways to prevent bot/smurf accounts.  Providing ID during registration, like how you identify yourself through Battle.net if you don't have access to your email anymore, is a guaranteed way of limiting 1 account per person,, thus eliminating duplicates.

Quote from RendInFriend >>

You’re definitely thinking outside the box, I’ll give you that. However, that will never happen. It directly competes with and reduces profits from the economy that HS created and manipulates.

The economy has never gotten cheaper, even when it has appeared to. The duplicate rule saved us from reopening the same legend, which was immensely helpful, but it was necessary to make the economy work with the addition of two legendaries per class and a tenth class. 

Back to your idea, the auction house would reduce the grind for cards/dust while also making monetary transactions outside of Blizz. The way it is now is how they want it, all transactions are between Blizz and consumer and there is no value outside of owning a card. This is such a profitable system, it was closely mirrored by mtg arena.

 Couldn't blizz just take a skim off the auctioned item, say like 20%, just like how WoW requires you to pay a auction fee when making auctions?  Sounds profitable to me

Oof, sorry for triple post LOL

For Blizz to make any money off this, I wouldn't mind paying a $1 to put a card up for auction

Quote from GaMatecal >>

Quote from RendInFriend >>

You’re definitely thinking outside the box, I’ll give you that. However, that will never happen. It directly competes with and reduces profits from the economy that HS created and manipulates.

The economy has never gotten cheaper, even when it has appeared to. The duplicate rule saved us from reopening the same legend, which was immensely helpful, but it was necessary to make the economy work with the addition of two legendaries per class and a tenth class. 

Back to your idea, the auction house would reduce the grind for cards/dust while also making monetary transactions outside of Blizz. The way it is now is how they want it, all transactions are between Blizz and consumer and there is no value outside of owning a card. This is such a profitable system, it was closely mirrored by mtg arena.

 Couldn't blizz just take a skim off the auctioned item, say like 20%, just like how WoW requires you to pay a auction fee when making auctions?  Sounds profitable to me

 20% off a sale that eats their sales of packs. It could be profitable, but you are absolutely going to hate how many extra packs you will have to open to make up the difference. If this system is more profitable than their current system, legendaries will much more rare.

With $9k wasted into this, I don’t even dare to dream it would ever happen.

And guess what? It will never happen. Not until the Oasis gets fully operational at least, but will ActiBlizz still be around?

.

Quote from RendInFriend >>

Quote from GaMatecal >>

Quote from RendInFriend >>

You’re definitely thinking outside the box, I’ll give you that. However, that will never happen. It directly competes with and reduces profits from the economy that HS created and manipulates.

The economy has never gotten cheaper, even when it has appeared to. The duplicate rule saved us from reopening the same legend, which was immensely helpful, but it was necessary to make the economy work with the addition of two legendaries per class and a tenth class. 

Back to your idea, the auction house would reduce the grind for cards/dust while also making monetary transactions outside of Blizz. The way it is now is how they want it, all transactions are between Blizz and consumer and there is no value outside of owning a card. This is such a profitable system, it was closely mirrored by mtg arena.

 Couldn't blizz just take a skim off the auctioned item, say like 20%, just like how WoW requires you to pay a auction fee when making auctions?  Sounds profitable to me

 20% off a sale that eats their sales of packs. It could be profitable, but you are absolutely going to hate how many extra packs you will have to open to make up the difference. If this system is more profitable than their current system, legendaries will much more rare.

 I feel like the rewards track could help a little with the amount of packs that will need to be opened, plus the potential gold you'll get from a successful auction. Someone smarter than I could probably explain the math involved, but i think with everything blizz has done so far, an auction house (at least a beta to let players try out on a PTS *that HS NEEDS*) doesn't seem so unrealistic anymore. 

Iksar seemed to be genuinely interested in the topic Solem had~ 

He really talked alot about the subject, go read Iksar's thoughts on Card NFT's

First to the finish?

Quote from Orhoz >>

First to the finish?

Quote from Biomass >>

With $9k wasted into this, I don’t even dare to dream it would ever happen.

And guess what? It will never happen. Not until the Oasis gets fully operational at least, but will ActiBlizz still be around?

 First to the finish?

i don't think this would ever happen and if, they would be stupid not to take about 30% of your profits

obviously i think you could only set cards up for trade which you've paid for, e.g. crafted cards wouldn't count whatsoever

all in all, i still think it's a terrible idea to implement

Blizzard alrdy make that mistake back in days with Diablo 3.

yep and it was a big mistake indeed.

I remember Diablo 3 right around launch, where the endgame wasn’t testing your character in greater rifts, but rather grinding gear to be an entry level blizzard employee.

Quote from GaMatecal >>

Well, there are ways to prevent bot/smurf accounts.  Providing ID during registration, like how you identify yourself through Battle.net if you don't have access to your email anymore, is a guaranteed way of limiting 1 account per person,, thus eliminating duplicates.

 That's an absolutely terrible idea, and it wouldn't work besides. Most teenagers, aka the largest group of players, don't have an ID. Even if that wasn't a problem, there is absolutely no way that I want to start giving random game companies MORE personal information. 

Quote from HS_trash >>

Blizzard alrdy make that mistake back in days with Diablo 3.

I think most people misunderstood, and continue to misunderstand, why the Diablo 3 economy collapsed. The Real Money Auction house had only a symbolic effect. Blizzard set minimum prices for gold in the RMAH, minimums that were largely ignored by the unauthorized real money transaction (RMT) websites, so almost no one traded on the RMAH. But the symbolic effect was powerful — it's hard to tell someone they're bad for buying gold for $ from a third party when you're trying to sell gold for $ on your own official platform.

No, the cause of Diablo 3's downfall was how it implemented Gold. Not only was it ridiculously easy to botfarm, it was the only in-game currency accepted for any and all transactions. Just add the inevitable bot farmers and their RMT websites for guaranteed economic devastation. Even without the RMAH, floods of inhumanly farmed Gold would have outpaced the Gold farmed by all human players combined — it just would have been a smaller, more daring group doing the buying, for a lower price per gold, from the botters. The impact on YOU, the non-RMT player, wasn't changed by the RMAH in any way.

The moral of Diablo 3 is not "don't have a RMAH" — although that is good advice if you want to take the moral high ground over botters and their third party RMT. The moral is to not force all transactions to be based off single currency that is hilariously easy for bots to farm, essentially handing control over your economy from the players to the botters.

Iksar showed he understands how D3's economy fell. He said an auction house in HS couldn't allow farmed goods to be sold, only goods bought with real money. That is exactly the correct conclusion.

"Hear me out" ... as if no one ever came up with this (and got shot down) before.

focus on the why before the UI of how it will work.

Diablo 3 should tell you why this is a bad idea