Yesterday I updated and shared the latest version of my gem calculator. It helps visualize and calculate how much gold goes into combining gems. It takes into account the new costs of each combination (which goes up each tier) as well as the estimated value of the new reagents (Pages and Tomes). What we learned is that the major cost of combining gems is no longer the cost of the gems themselves, but instead the combination cost and it’s a lot. The combination goes takes gold out of the economy while the cost of the gems stays in the economy.

For example. If a chipped gem costs it’s ‘vendor price’ of 200 gold and you can buy Pages and Tomes for their ‘vendor prices’ of 680 (Page of Jewelcrafting), 1080 (Tome of Jewelcrafting) and 1280 (Tome of Secrets) the aggregate cost of a single Radiant Star is almost 900 billion gold. I was freaking out a few months ago when I realized it would cost 40 million gold when combine prices were fixed at 50 gold each. Nine hundred billion gold is a lot, but what happens when you start estimating values of chipped gems and the other reagents?

The real fun of Diablo 3 is trying new combinations of items and skills. If you find yourself struggling against enemies or a little bit bored with the game, experiment with your character build. I laugh at the idea of paying 'real money' for items, there is no way i would even consider it. I am playing Diablo 3 now, and have been since it was available, i have got to the 2nd Act in nightmare on my own steam and thoroughly enjoying it, the thought of buying items with real cash would take away the feeling of accomplishment for me.

Diablo III will present players with a unique opportunity to earn a modest amount of money that is somewhat proportional to the time they invest in the game. I'm watching this one closely. Not necessarily for the direct profit potential, but for a deep curiosity about how it will evolve. I even wrote a blog post at with speculation about just how. If you have been a fan of Diablo franchise or any Blizzard game, you know that when playing their games, you can sell in-game items like characters, items and so much more for REAL MONEY! After I mastered Diablo 3, I’ve been making around $150/day steadily but I plan on spending just a bit more time and double the earnings!

It’s almost impossible to guess what these things will cost, but let’s add a zero to the end of each one and see what happens. So I threw in 2,000 gold for a chipped gem. Then I threw in 6,800 gold for Pages of Jewelcrafting, 10,800 for Tomes of Jewelcrafting and 12,800 for a Tome of Secrets. The answer? A Radiant Star now costs 4 trillion (approximately 1/4th of the United States Federal Debt).

Even though we multiplied the material prices by 10x the total price of the Radiant Star only quadrupled. This goes to show how fricken expensive it is to combine a Radiant Star. Blizzard is taking 25% out of the economy with these numbers along with 15% on every transaction. What’s the moral of today’s story? If you want to get rich, create an insanely popular Mutli-Player Action-Role Playing Game. Give it to your loyal customers to make sure they play it (through WoW’s Annual Pass), hype it up for 2 years and through a 6 month beta and back it with a revolutionary real-money auction house. Take 15% of every transaction, buy an island in the Caribbean, a hammock and find a nice spot on the beach to enjoy the sun.

The employee accidentally sent the email to more than 1,000 people. Advice for retailersIn-store security is important. Anyone who received the email could immediately go shopping or start to convert the gift card numbers into cash. Store gift cards behind the counter or locked in a cabinet. It’s not advisable to leave them out in an area that is publicly accessible because of the high probability someone will perpetrate one of the scams described above.It’s even more important to have good policies and procedures in place for the central handling of gift cards numbers. Can i turn my starbucks gift card into real money.

Put this into perspective. The first player who acquires a Radiant Star gem will have something that is worth at least a trillion gold, if not more. If 1,000 gold sells for a penny on the RMAH that’s still $8,500 dollars after Blizzard’s $1,500 dollar transaction fee. This tells us one of three things, the Radiant Star is going to be the holy grail of Diablo 3, Gold is going to be practically worthless, or I’m a fracking idiot and don’t know what I’m talking about.

Let me know what you think. If a Radiant Star is worth 1-10 trillion, how much is the best 1 handed weapon going to be that randomly drops in Inferno in the second week of the game?

Important: Many of the strategies and tips I share here were originally inspired by the people at the Diablo 3 Gold Secrets Forum. If you're serious about making the big bucks in Diablo 3, or just being the best players, you need to signup ASAP.

Blizzard announced Diablo 4 at BlizzCon 2019, but people are still loving and playing Diablo 3 in 2019, almost eight years since Blizzard released it. But before the Reaper of Souls expansion, Diablo 3 wasn’t the lovable, wildly replayable game it is now.

At BlizzCon 2019, we sat down and spoke to executive producer Allen Adham, art director John Mueller, and game director Luis Barriga about avoiding the franchise’s past mistakes.

The real-money auction house

When we asked which mistakes the team worked to avoid, Adham was quick to bring up the real-money auction house. The team agreed that it wasn’t a feature they’d go back to. But Adham said that Blizzard still wanted to enable trading between players in Diablo 4.

“There are a lot of great elements to trade if it’s done in a contained way,” said Adham. “So we’ve got some pretty solid ideas on how to make trade viable without letting it disrupt the game.”

During our interview, Blizzard mentioned players trading with one another in town for a powerful item, or loot distribution from a guild leader in Diablo 4.

When Blizzard launched Diablo 3, it featured a real-money auction house, a store where players could buy and sell gear for in-game gold or a real-money equivalence. The auction house created a Diablo that was worth farming for gold, rather than gear. Instead of earning loot from monsters, players best avenue for loot was from other players. That seemingly won’t be the case with Diablo 4.

Error 37 – server issues

Players who tried to play Diablo 3 on launch day still remember the the server issues. Many players — ourselves included — sat all night trying to play, only to face down a devilish red box by the name of Error 37.

Barriga said that avoiding these kinds of server issues at launch is almost as important as not recreating the auction house. One of the ways Blizzard plans to combat day-one server instability is through longer beta programs.

“We were pretty protective of our not showing too much of our content and we had a limited beta during Diablo 3,” said Barriga. I think you will see us take a different approach here.”

The team mentioned plans for longterm betas for Diablo 4. We don’t have details of when or what they’ll feature, but the process could be similar to the studio’s beta programs for World of Warcraft — where the upcoming expansion sits on a test environment for months at a time.

How To Make Money Playing Diablo 3

Barriga also mentioned plans to seriously stress test Diablo 4 before unleashing it upon millions of hungry fans.

Content draughts

Finally, Adham mentioned a desire to keep the Diablo content flowing post-launch.

The real-money auction house

Blizzard’s complicated history with China looms over BlizzCon 2019

Error 37 – server issues

How To Make Money Playing Diablo 3

Content draughts

How To Make Real Money Playing Diablo 3