Diablo III 'Auction House' Launched for Americas Region

The Diablo III Real Money Auction House (RMAH) launched for the Americas game region early this morning. Trading is now available in the US dollar, Australian dollar and Mexican peso currencies, with currencies from the rest of the Americas region set to roll out after all RMAH elements have gone live.

Players will also only be able to trade equipment for now. Until the equipment trading stabilises, Blizzard will not be rolling out trading for commodities.

Like the current in-game gold auction house, item delivery for the RMAH is expected to occur instantaneously. However, Blizzard may conduct reviews of transactions under certain circumstances. The items concerned will be labeled as ‘processing’ until the review is complete. This is, presumably, to avoid fraudulent transactions – and to police dubious ones.

And here’s one more way that Blizzard is protecting the RMAH. Apart from the compulsory authenticator use mentioned in our previous story, it has also become a requirement for players using PayPal to sign up for the Battle.net SMS Protect service. The Battle.net SMS Protect will have you receiving text messages with a verification code, which you must enter to proceed with your PayPal transaction.

Do note that you’ll only be able to access the RMAH while playing in your home game region. This home game region is defined by the country of residence registered to your B.net account, so most Singaporean players won’t be able to use the RMAH beyond the Americas server. Southeast Asia is by the way, part of the Americas game region by default.

So while it looks like Blizz has taken all steps possible to ensure no fraudulent transactions take place in the RMAH, given the prowess of most hackers, we’re not sure how long this bastion of safe trading will last.

(Source & Photo: Blizzard blog)