Diablo III: Death of the Auction House
Finally, after nearly two years of “service”, the Diablo III gold and real-money auction houses have officially shut down today as part of the preparations being made for the arrival of Reaper of Souls. Anyone with items and bids currently active though shouldn’t panic; auctions will expire as normal and all items and gold in the ecosystem will be sent to the relevant parties. Blizzard has given everyone a generous amount of time (until 24th of June to be precise) to claim their items/cash but once that time is up they will be gone forever, along with the broken system that was the auction house.
The main problem with the auction house in Diablo III was that it made an already unrewarding grind-fest even less rewarding. No matter how much you played and how much gear you found, there would always be some guy with the luck of the RNG golden gods who found something better than your little trinket. Your sense of achievement when you get your first legendary is somewhat belittled by the fact that thousands of other people found a better one (and don’t even get me started on health globe effects). In a game where the only real incentive to keep playing is to get better loot, the tall shadow cast by the presence of a real-money action house makes playing the actual game seem somewhat pointless.
A secondary problem with Auction house comes from players with malicious intentions. Let’s take what happened a year ago as an example. Following a patch, some players found a bug that allowed them to duplicate gold indefinitely, with strong ramifications for the Diablo III economy. Although the bug was dealt with quickly and the exploiters were swiftly punished, the whole ordeal highlighted just how fragile the auction house economy was and even caused Blizzard back then to admit that the auction house was probably a bad idea that could lead to more problems in the future.
Shutting down the auction house was definitely a step in the right direction on Blizzard’s part that will hopefully pave the way for Reaper of Souls to come in and revitalise the Diablo formula. Goodbye, auction house. Goodbye and good riddance.
For full details, an official FAQ can be found here.