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Gold
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===The Economy===
The Diablo 3 team has repeatedly stressed <ref>[http://www.diii.net/blog/comments/bashiok-on-gold-sinks Bashiok forum post] - IncGamers February 8, 2009</ref> their interest in having gold remain a viable game resource. Gold will be much less common in Diablo III than in previous games in the series. Monsters do not drop such huge heaps of gold, and items sell for fairly low amounts, plus players will be breaking down many of their unwanted items in the [[salvage cube]], since [[materials]] for [[crafting]] will likely be more desirable than gold. On top of the greater scarcity of gold, there will be numerous "[[gold sink]]s" in Diablo III, to give players something worth spending gold on. [[Gambling]] was a perpetual use for gold in Diablo 2, but the odds of obtaining a useful item via gambling were too low to motivate most players to keep gambling, once they reached the end game. Known gold sinks in Diablo III include [[respecs]], item repairs, item socketing, Artisan training, item upgrading (such as gems at the [[Jeweler]]), item crafting, item enchanting, and more. Another possible gold sink is some kind of trading [[Auction House]], though the team hasn't given any details on such a feature as of yet.
[[Jay Wilson]] described the creation of the game's economy, and named some of the ways the team is looking to make gold more valuable, in an interview from [[BlizzCon 2009]]. <ref>[http://g4tv.com/games/pc/28197/diablo-iii/articles/68225/BlizzCon-2009-Diablo-III-Game-Director-Interview/ Jay Wilson Interview @ Blizzcon 2009] - G4TV. August 2009</ref>
::As long as you’ve got a way to get it under control, you know, with DLC or an expansion, make an adjustment. So, having a lot of things for people to spend gold on is really important. Every system that we design, we go, “Oh, how can we spend gold here?” People have asked about a respec system, for example. We will have one. We haven’t designed it yet, but I guarantee you that you’ll have to spend a lot of gold. I can guarantee that because that’s one of the places we’d look at to try and balance the economy. There are a whole bunch of systems like that that we haven’t announced or are in progress. “Will you be able to remove gems from items?” Yes, you will able to and I guarantee you it will cost a lot of gold. Those are part of the ways that you handle and make gold valuable.
====Item Economy===
It's too early to say anything much about the item economy, since there are too many unknowns. Players have no idea about the intended scarcity of high end items, the costs or likely success rate of high end crafting recipes, the quality of items NPCs will sell, etc. All those things will obviously be prime balancing concerns come the beta and then the early days after release, and there's no way to predict how that will all shake out in advance.
The elephant in the room, when speculating about Diablo III's economy, is the factor that ruined Diablo II's economy: duping and hacking. Valuable items were duplicated and widely-disseminated, wrecking the value of [[legit]] items. [[Hacked]] items were created that were better than any legit items could ever be. And especially in the D2X days, massive [[duping]] of {{iw|Rune Runes}} has made the elite quality {{iw|runeword Runewords}} vastly more common and affordable than they were designed to be.
The Diablo III developers have said that there will not be hacking and duping in Diablo III, and that they'll be able to apply the lessons they've learned in keeping WoW largely cheat-free. Most fans wish them the best of luck with that, but as successful as hackers have been in ruining the economy of most online RPGs, the [[D3 Team]] clearly has their work cut out for them.
===Artisans===