When Blizzard announced that Diablo 3 would be getting an auction house feature, there were some gamers that were for the system, and some against the system. Those “for” the system felt that this would allow for a more legal and organized way to trade loot, while those against the feature felt that this would allow players with more gold to upgrade their characters, while those who can’t afford it will have to grind it out themselves. In fact former and current Blizzard employees have felt that the auction house feature had a detrimental effect on the game and that it could actually hurt it.
It turns out that Blizzard has decided that it does and has since announced that the auction house feature would be removed from the game and that the service would be shut down on the 18th of March 2014. This applies to both the gold auction house and the real money auction house. According to Blizzard, the auction house “ultimately undermines Diablo’s core game play: kill monsters to get cool loot,” which we wholeheartedly agree with.
The removal of the auction house would also tie in with the new Loot 2.0 system that would be part of the upcoming expansion, Reaper of Souls. Loot 2.0 is a new loot system that would result in less loot being dropped, but at the same time provide drops that would be more relevant to a player’s character, i.e. a wizard item with intelligence stats versus strength stats. If you have a couple of minutes to spare, you can watch Blizzard’s explanation in the video above.