Recently Blizzard announced that players will be able to make purchases on Diablo 3’s Real Money Auction House (or RMAH for short) using their PayPal balance. So, while you’re out there selling things on eBay and maybe doing a little freelancing work on the side for your PayPal bucks, you now have another option: you can play the Diablo 3 item market.
The Olden Days
Making money with Diablo is pretty old hat. You’d make a bot (or a whole lot of bots) and do farming runs on Mephisto, Baal, and various other bosses in Diablo 2. You’d then sell this loot for forums gold at places like JSP. This carried a real money equivalent, and some people still make a decent living farming item on the Diablo 2 ladder. In this particular example, this sort of item reselling is not supported by Blizzard.
Built-in Support
Blizzard does support the Real Money Auction House. They put it in the game, after all. Now, when you put an item up for real money, you don’t have to worry about being scammed out of the money, the item, or both like you would on a seedy forum. Instead, Blizzard gives you the convenience of making cash online through supported in-game features. For a small cut, of course. As a real money item seller, you’ll probably see your profits chipped at in several ways.
Get Your Model –T In Any Color You Like, So Long As That Color Is Black
First, unless you choose to cash out in BlizzBucks in Blizzard’s BlizzWallet feature, you’ll face cash out fees. More, if you choose to cash out in this way, you’ll be limited to spending that money in Blizzard’s store on Blizzard products. This is fine if you want to finance StarCraft 2, World of Warcraft, and Diablo 3 expansions, but not so good if you’d like to spend it on other things.
The Tax Man Cometh
Second, unless you choose to cash out into the Blizzard Wallet, you will face fees related to transferring the money to a third party, in this case, PayPal. As anyone who has ever used PayPal before knows, they make a great deal of their money just like a real bank does: by charging you fees. Fees to convert currency and fees to transfer the currency to your actual bank account.
In Any Case
Despite all of this, it is clear that some people will manage to make a living off of Diablo 3 items in the Real Money Auction House. You’ll be able to do so in a number of ways, from farming items using multiple accounts just like in Diablo 2, to spending your own money to corner the market to make certain people pay the prices you want them to pay. Of course, we’ll know nothing for certain until Blizzard gives us a Diablo 3 release date.
