Blizzard closes down Diablo 3 Auction House

Awesome, the AH was my only real complaint about D3. Now Im looking forward to RoS even more!

Great decision and change, and not to bring any negativity into this, but how in the hell did it not cross their mind that a REAL MONEY AH would "ultimately undermine Diablo's core game play: kill monsters to get cool loot"? Completely blows my mind. It killed what made Diablo fun

Originally Posted by vindicatorx

Too little too late for me I am not paying for Reaper of Souls

I mean, I understand where you're coming from cause I was hugely let down at the start, but id wait and see. Just from datamining alone,

Clans fully featured with ranks/chat/new UI / trade system.
Loot 2.0 system, which actually has game build changing items, if you read through the item list, half the items can change a build completely one way or the other.
Removal of the AH and with better loot comming in after that, it will clean up full bought chars with $$ or huge chars. It's pretty much the old d2 ladder reset with new items comming they just destroy the old ones which could be good for people like you who need fresh start if you have not been playing.

The new ladder system / Paragon level system with spending points.

New endless modes of mobs for loot, updated ubers etc..


to me it's starting to look like D2 like it shoulda been but better.

The AH shouldt have bin implemented in the first place... the game was more about farming gold to buy stuff from AH instead of farming bosses like in D2..

I never did like the pay to win business model for games. They are great for profit in the short term but terrible for retaining a player base in the long run.

For example, someone could spend $50 and get a ton of gear for, say, a WW Wizard build and only have to walk around and spam 3 buttons and lots magically drop. That's not compelling game play.

In hindsight, they could have made the AH work by doing several things:

Put a cap on how much someone can post an item for.

Implement gold caps

Make gold harder to obtain

Certain gear sets BoE meaning once you put it on, it can't be traded which leads to less recycling.

All of these things apply in the WoW economy and on most servers it's as stable as can be.

TLDR; they should have followed the WoW economy model closer.

I happened to click diablo 3 while i was waiting for wow to come up today on my bnet browser and in bold letters: Diablo 3 removing auction house under news...i was like '..........." lolwut!?! *mind exploded* i was like omg is this for real!? i click it and it came to the video, with the directors and what not explaining it...*shivers down spine*

sitting here in awe..and shock just like wow, omg and wow over and over. Biggest news event in d3 all year, that is freaking crazy. Never thought that would ever happen and its one of the main reasons i stopped playing because my characters were to weak and the only gear i could find and get was from the AH but i was always to broke to afford anything

so I'd log i and play and get bored cuz i needed millions of gold for 1 item, and i had 500k saved up took me a whole day, felt worthless grinding all that to be able to afford gear, and i play casually so its not like i can just play day and night like some people can (not jealous, just saying) now everyoen can be on even ground from the start and any gear you find you can be proud of and dont feel like you are competing with 1000's of others, it killed the game for me when i find a legendary and check AH and see 50 of the same thing...makes loot feel worthless

Now..with 2.0 loot and all the changes with reapers...INSANE! my interest in the expansion just jumped 200% cuz now i feel i can come back prior to expansion and start getting geared and getting some paragon levels, and level my barbarian (i play demon hunter main) and start finding loot, real loot.

My only thing is now, with the removal not until march 18th of 2014, does that mean reaper of souls will be released on that day or very close after? that would only give them 5 months or so of beta? if beta is announced/released at blizzcon (most likely) or even december, thats 4 months of beta, then removal of AH in march...maybe reapers is coming spring 2014? they are pretty far along, and we know all the new modes thanks to datamining (assuming everything makes the cut in time) so....all i can say is...bring it on....i am ready!

/happydance

Originally Posted by Simca

I knew they were considering it, but it seemed like they were leaning towards keeping it.

Very interesting choice.

I'd argue they went with killing it because it's not a feature of the console versions either.

Originally Posted by Jtbrig7390

Once again not everyone did that and I bet it was a small % who did.

No it was not a small percentage, it was quite large. In fact, towards the end of the game's life time, I'd say well over 60% of players were buying almost everything from Ebay.

And what's more, is with Diablo 3, Blizzard has just planted the seed of "Buy my gear" in people's heads. Now people will flock to Ebay and stuff, since they have the notion in their head they can/should just buy their gear.

But at the end of the day it doesn't really matter if someone else is buying gear or not because unless you're a shallow, retarded twat who actually gets mad when they die in some random Diablo PvP, you shouldn't care at all.

It makes more long-term sense to let the "Pay-to-Win" subset of players take the risks that they're already aware of when engaging in such exchanges with seedy third parties than to continue to allow the player base to hemorrhage at the insistence of protecting this subset from itself.

[Citation needed]

Originally Posted by Psiclonus

It makes more long-term sense to let the "Pay-to-Win" subset of players take the risks that they're already aware of when engaging in such exchanges with seedy third parties than to continue to allow the player base to hemorrhage at the insistence of protecting this subset from itself.

Pay to win/AH was not the problem, it was the loot system. D2 loot was more reliable...you knew when a wand dropped what the stats would be like. D3 you get not only have a larger variable range within the stats, but the kind of stats that can be on the item vary to much.

Even after loot 2.0 there is a need for a system to transfer items between two parties. D2 trade chat/games was a terrible way of exchanging items, never made use of third party sites back then. To shady for me. So the need something...it could be an AH or it could be some sort of barter system where you post an item + a list of wants.

Originally Posted by JimPaladin

I like how everyone seems to think this spells the end of people buying their gear when in fact they're just going to go RIGHT back to fucking Ebay and stuff just like they did in Diablo 2.

I mean, unless there's something about this I'm missing and they've imposed strict restrictions to make it impossible to free trade with people, this changes nothing. You will all die screaming.

Also, for fuck's sake just play Diablo 2 instead of 3.

Edit: Oh right, forgot to mention- As I said, people are still going to be buying/selling items for real world $$$CashMoney$$$, the only difference now will be Blizzard makes no additional revenue from it and it's an insecure method of transaction. Lol!

You are ignoring the fact that the AH had a direct impact on drops. That was the biggest issue. The fact that farming wasn't even worthwhile, and you would almost NEVER get a piece of loot that was an upgrade for your own character. It was all about farming crappy gear to save up for better gear on the AH.

People will still buy gear, sure. You can't control that. That wasn't really the issue though.

Blizzard long time ago, stated, that AH impacts the loot in games. Getting rid of the AH hopefully will free the loot system, so the current scenario, in which xyz is not lootable bacuse it's on the AH, won't occur, hopefully.

gj blizzard... spot on

I hope they replace it with a trading post for one on one offers, without gold and money, just with items.

Hmm I don't get it, if you don't like the auction house just...don't use it? What's the point in removing it ?

Originally Posted by ognomad

They (Bizzard) where just not making any money off it......cutting their losses I'd say.

This. Pretty sure they would not have closed the AH if it was profitable. $$$$$$ Respect for Blizzard? - dont be fooled...

great...back to spamming horribly coded forums for trading. considering gold is extremely ez to make in the millions, how exactly is the gold/ah system a problem? and if you are dedicated to put the time in, you make a buck from the rmah. ppl are butthurt because they fail to farm the ah/rmah effectively due to lack of time or skill and want everyone to suffer and be equal.

A diablo is a not a diablo game until the expansion.

pretty awesome news...at the end of the day every problem D3 had can be clearly traced back to the AH. I didn't hate it from day 1 but once actually starting to play the game it was obvious it would be a huge detriment

Lets be entirely honest here, theyre shutting it down because after the initial cash flowed in from the real money AH, it stopped making any money because nobody was using it. If they had left it as an ingame gold only AH it might have worked. By adding real money, they turned it into a Facebook game, and the longevity on those is pretty short.

Ill be glad to see the back of it

They must have Bobby Kottick tied and locked in a closet somewhere for this to actually be happening.