Despite all the launch woes with servers going down and gamers not being able to play, Diablo III has been setting major industry records.
One of the long-awaired Diablo III features delayed in the wake of fears over hacking was an auction house where players buy and sell in-game items for real cash. Now that those hacking fears are behind Blizzard (for the most part), that Auction House has officially launched in the Americas.
The auction house currently offers payment options in US dollars, Australia dollars, and the Mexican peso.
Payments are accepted for virtual items via approved third-party payment systems or a Battle.net Balance account. Blizzard Entertainment says that the real money auction house for Europe and the remaining Americas region will launch at some point in the “near future.”
Blizzard certainly doesn’t want another instance of servers crashing due to overwhelming traffic, so it’s rolling out the new auction house in a staggered setting to ensure reliability. Gamers can access the real money auction house by clicking the “Auction House” button on the left-hand side of the campaign screen and then clicking on the button that shows your region’s currency in the upper right-hand corner.
As expected, players are also required to follow a few security requirements when logging in to the real money Auction House, including attaching a Battle.net Balance to a physical authenticator or mobile authenticator account.
Gamers who use PayPal will rely on the Battle.net SMS Protect Service, and mayalso occasionally receive a text message via their mobile phone when making PayPal related transactions containing a code that must be entered to proceed with the transaction.
