Diablo 3 players will use real money to make purchases in game, and I think this is pretty interesting. While in the Americas I can’t see this being too much of a big deal in Europe where servers are likely to be region wide it could be more complex. Obviously the Euro covers most of mainland Europe but there are still countries where individual currencies survive. Beyond this, since the economies of individual countries are variable the value of goods will rise and fall in different regions in a way that is impossible with, for example, WoW gold

In WoW an item costs X number of gold, a market value set within the game world. It takes into account only the economics of the game world itself – the balance of classes, factions, skills sets, and optimisation of characters in that world. It is true to say that there is a certain standardisation between servers (thanks to cross server forums and guides) but the free market of each server will always determine the price. Introducing REAL currency circumnavigates the in-game economy by involving real world market forces; local economy, currency values, even complex player demographics. A player in Greece right at the moment may have a much harder time making purchases, for example, than a player in Germany. Likewise, players in the UK would find it much more affordable than those in Portugal.

It is hard to say whether this has a positive or negative impact on the game but it does clearly allow our own capitalist economics to filter into the game worlds IN PRACTICE in a way that before was much less common. Instead, market economies were built on the same THEORY in game worlds as in the western world but the playing field was levelled by the creation of a new currency that was independent from your own real world wealth. I can see the advantages, but I wonder if introducing real world economies will serve to further blur the boundaries between ‘character’ and ‘player’ in favour of the player.