Bind on Equip

Bind on Equip items are designed so that they can only be used by the character that first equips them. They can not be traded once they have been equipped, often called "soulbound", or "bound" to that player. The item can normally be sold to a vendor, however.

• See also Bind on Pick-up and Bind on Account.

BoE in Diablo III

Some very high level (above level 85) Diablo 3 items will likely be designated as BoE to keep the end game economy from stagnating.

The Diablo 3 team has said that BoE might apply to accounts (BoA), rather than to characters, thus allowing players to exchange such items between their own characters on the same account.

There will not be any BoP (Bind on Pick-up) items in Diablo 3, other than quest items that are only carried in the quest tab of the inventory, not actually equipped.

Blizzard Comments

Jay Wilson addressed this issue in an interview from BlizzCon 2009. [1]

Jay Wilson: We have no “Soulbound” or bind-on-pickup, except for quest items. We do have bind-on-equip for the highest end items in the game. We targeted, roughly, any item above level 85. These we will do as bind-on-equip. The reason for this is that we want people to be able to trade them, but we also want to remove the high-end items from the economy. One of the greatest ways that you can do that is with bind-on-equip. What we don't want is to have a situation where you find something on the ground like, “Oh, man. This would be a perfect weapon for my Monk. Oh, but I just picked it up and now it's on the wrong character.” We don't want that at all.

Most of our focus on Diablo 3 is as a trading game. So, if you take trading out of the item space, you ruin the core of the game. Finding a really great item that is not for you is still a great event because it means you have a bartering tool to get the item that you do want. We definitely want to make sure that that still exists.

Bashiok addressed this issue during a mini-interview posted as part of Blizzcast #13, in February 2010. [2]

Zarhym: Will all Bind on Equip or Bind on Pickup items be bound to account? So you can hand them down to your other characters as you find better gear.

Bashiok: Maybe. It sounds kind of cool. So I asked Jay and some of the other designers about this actually because I wasn’t sure, but Jay’s response was “That sounds awesome!” And he likes things that are awesome. Which is a very Jay Wilson quote. But there could be economic reasons that we don’t do that, there could be gameplay reasons we don’t do that. It’s probably too early to say, but that sounds cool so we’ll have to see.

Bashiok elaborated on this later that same day, when a fan pointed out that BoA could lead to stagnation in the economy, if every account eventually had several of the best items that players could pass around between their different characters. [3]

Totally, which is why I said “But there could be economic reasons that we don’t do that.”

It would probably stagnate the economy… UNLESS, there are other systems in place that could make it attractive for players to essentially destroy their BoAs. So I don’t think it’s without solution at least, but it could get sticky if not balanced or pulled off just right.

Anyway, we’re not really seriously considering BoA items at this point in time.

References

• August 2009: Game Director Interview by G4TV.com.
• February 2010: Bashiok on Blizzcast #13.
• February 2010: [Bashiok forum post.