Diablo 3 to Retire Auction House

Hot on the heels of my Diablo 3 console review from this morning, Blizzard have announced that they’re closing the real-money auction house.

This obviously has no direct relation to my review. I mention it because in explaining why they’re retiring the auction house, production director on Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls Jon Hight has entirely validated my noob’s observation of the game. Of course, most you probably already knew what the core of the game really was:

“…it became increasingly clear that despite the benefits of the AH system and the fact that many players around the world use it, it ultimately undermines Diablo’s core game play: kill monsters to get cool loot.”
– John Hight, Diablo III Auction House Update, Battle.net Diablo blog.

The auction house won’t be retired instantly, so whatever items you’ve been diligently farming away in your PC version of the game can still be put up for grabs. It will close on March 18, 2014, 6 months from today.

Just a few weeks ago, Blizzard told PC Gamer that they had no plans to do away with the auction house and that it was to be a place of last resort when looking for a particular item. They’ve obviously changed their minds since then, as game director Josh Mosquiera confirmed in a video today that the presence of both auction houses “really short-circuited our core reward loop.”

It seems a shame that they’re taking away the game currency auction house but the new loot system for the upcoming Reaper of Souls expansion pack is a chance to completely rebalance the system. Mosquiera also confirmed that the new system will be dropping “less, better, more epic items”. The philosophy at Blizzard now is that killing monsters should be the most satisfying way to get new items.

Well, yes. It’ll be the only way now. That or the black market real-money auctions, which I thought were the driving factor for all of this in the first place.

Watch the announcement video below: