On Battle.net, Real Money Has an Expiration Date (Joystiq)

[Drew Wilson]

Diablo III may not be out yet, but that's no good reason not to be filling up your virtual coffers for the day that it hits the streets! Blizzard has thrown the switch on Battle.net Balance, activating its online payment service that allows players to charge up their Battle.net funds to purchase various Blizzard game services.

The new Balance system can be used to buy World of Warcraft game time (although you can't set up a recurring subscription with it), in-game pets and mounts, paid account services in WoW such as character transfers, digital copies of Blizzard titles, and the opportunity to buy and sell items on Diablo III's auction house. It's important to note that not all regions will be able to participate in Diablo III's real-money transactions, however.

Once real money has been funneled into Battle.net Balance, it cannot be converted back into cash. Blizzard does state that in some regions, players will have an option to get cash back on Diablo III auction sales via PayPal. The company also mentioned that there is a cap on how much any player can have in his or her Balance account and that there are potentially region-specific expiration dates for Balance funds.

Source

Really???

[evilmegaman]

Blizzard is king of RIPOFF. I actually have been boycotting them since WoW

[bcwar]

this is something that people have been clamoring for on the wow forums for some time. I'm very disappointed to see this happening. Its bad enough that some people take fake gold so seriously in the wow auction houses. But now they're going to be playing with real money? I may just pass on diablo III

[Signa]

I'm already passing on D3. Between Titan's Quest and Sacred 2, I'm set in the hack-n-slash RPG genre.