Diablo III Auction House Closing Down

[Andy Chalk]

Diablo III Auction House Closing Down

The Diablo III Auction House will removed from the game next year.

In news that will no doubt be welcomed by PC Diablo fans everywhere, Blizzard has announced that the Diablo III Auction House is being closed down. "When we initially designed and implemented the auction houses, the driving goal was to provide a convenient and secure system for trades. But as we've mentioned on different occasions, 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," Diablo III Production Director John Hight revealed on Battle.net. "With that in mind, we want to let everyone know that we've decided to remove the gold and real-money auction house system from Diablo III."

"We feel that this move along with the Loot 2.0 system being developed concurrently with Reaper of Souls will result in a much more rewarding game experience for our players," he wrote. "We're working out the details of how the auction house system will be shut down, but we wanted to share the news as soon as we made the decision in order to give everyone as much advance notice as possible. Please note that the shutdown will occur on March 18, 2014. We will keep everyone informed as we work through this process."

The removal of the Auction House is both surprising and not. Blizzard had long insisted that it was a necessary component of the game as a safe place for players to trade equipment, but admitted back in March that it would probably shut it down [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122980-Blizzard-Admits-Diablo-III-Auction-House-Was-a-Mistake] if it could come up with an acceptable way to do so. The recently-released console versions of Diablo III, which don't make use of the Auction House, further demonstrated that it wasn't as necessary to the smooth functioning of the game as Blizzard had originally envisioned. It's a big step, and long overdue - and who knows? Maybe a proper, offline single-player mode will follow someday, too.

Source: Battle.net [http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/10974978/]


Permalink

 

[Aeshi]

Oh yes, I'm certainly going to enjoy either grinding millions of gems one by one or spending about an hour finding somebody who will trade them just so I can even remotely come close to crafting one of the higher-tier gems as opposed to just selecting the gem I want to buy, typing in how many I want to buy and pressing "Buyout"

I'm certainly gonna enjoy checking about 80 different Legendaries that people are offering one by one with almost zero ability to compare any of them to each other to see if they're better than mine rather than just selecting what sort of item I want, typing in the stats and seeing what happens to be available to buy.

I'm certainly going to enjoy being bombarded by spambots advertising the 3rd party sites that will ensure this doesn't actually change anything.

This is just a pathetic attempt to satisfy the "I can't beat the game, it must be because of the eeeeeeeviiiiiillll RMAH and nothing at all to do with the fact that I'm a mouthbreather who can't operate the keyboard and the mouse at the same time without suffocating" crowd

 

[shintakie10]

There's already 3rd party sites that sell stuff, its just not nearly as widespread as it was in D2 because there's a legitimate competition in Blizzard instead of other illegitimate competition from other illegitimate sites.

Once this move goes in, however, that'll change. Expect to see the number of sites blow up within days.

 

[Eric the Orange]

I made a topic slightly before this so I'll just copy paste my post from there,

"Let's hope that this will also end the always online requirement. If not then they were lying about the Ah being the reason it was needed."

Also ironic given that this news topic was posted here only about a week ago

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.827843-Diablo-IIIs-Auction-House-And-Always-Online-Arent-Going-Anywhere?page=1

 

[velcthulhu]

The game's a lot more fun when I pretend the auction hall doesn't exist, so I'd say they're making the right choice.

 

[synobal]

"When we initially designed and implemented the auction houses, the driving goal was to provide a convenient and secure system for trades."

The AH would of been fine, except that once you get past a certain point you don't get item drops for your level any more you get item drops for 10 to 15 levels ago so you have to buy new and better items on the auction house. It wasn't so much that the AH was bad it was just the fact that they made it so you never got anything you could use so you had to use the AH that made it bad.

Because the AH was designed to make blizzard money, and not about providing a service to the players. Despite what they say about it. Had they made it so that the AH was optional and you could get gear that was leveled properly for you via regular item drops it would of never been an issue. People who wanted to use the AH would of used it, people who didn't want to would of just kept getting cool loot from monsters.

Blizzard's greed ruined it, not the auction house.

 

[Matthi205]

This is pretty good news for all the Diablo players and fans out there. This will probably make the game more fair in terms of it's looting system and not force you to buy stuff in the auction house for ludicrous amounts of in-game money.

I don't personally play Diablo 3 (played 2 for some time, but now mouse-cursor-driven controls aren't for me anymore), but I know quite a few people that do. They wanted to wait for exactly this to go for the highest difficulties.

 

[Aeshi]

The AH would of been fine, except that once you get past a certain point you don't get item drops for your level any more you get item drops for 10 to 15 levels ago so you have to buy new and better items on the auction house. It wasn't so much that the AH was bad it was just the fact that they made it so you never got anything you could use so you had to use the AH that made it bad.

If it was impossible to get good items at higher levels, then where do the tons and tons of Legendary uber-gear on the RMAH right now come from? Is everyone else playing "Diablo 3: Everyone but you" edition where the first thing you get when making a new character is an infinite supply of good gear?

"Impossible to get good gear" might have been true when the game was released, but it sure as hell isn't the case now that Legendaries are super-common (let alone when Loot 2.0 removes what little difficulty the game has left). You don't need the RMAH just to get good gear, just some patience, which amusingly enough seems to be a virtue that the people who whine about how things are being dumbed down for the "ME ME ME NOW NOW NOW Crowd" don't seem to have themselves either.

 

[Weaver]

Why is anyone still playing Diablo 3? I know there's a new expansion on the way, but why would anyone still be grinding it out for hours a day?

 

[Shjade]

Seriously though, when are they removing the online requirement?

That's the bottom line. I never cared about the AH one way or the other; it's the always online, lags-in-your-single-player-game quality that kept me from buying D3.

If that went away...well, I don't know that I'd get it regardless (sorta outgrown my dungeon crawler loot RNG gaming phase), but it would at least elevate the game from "absolutely not" to "possibly maybe."

 

[synobal]

The AH would of been fine, except that once you get past a certain point you don't get item drops for your level any more you get item drops for 10 to 15 levels ago so you have to buy new and better items on the auction house. It wasn't so much that the AH was bad it was just the fact that they made it so you never got anything you could use so you had to use the AH that made it bad.

If it was impossible to get good items at higher levels, then where do the tons and tons of Legendary uber-gear on the RMAH right now come from? Is everyone else playing "Diablo 3: Everyone but you" edition where the first thing you get when making a new character is an infinite supply of good gear?

"Impossible to get good gear" might have been true when the game was released, but it sure as hell isn't the case now that Legendaries are super-common (let alone when Loot 2.0 removes what little difficulty the game has left). You don't need the RMAH just to get good gear, just some patience.

No once you get into the final difficulty, there you can sometimes get items that are useful for you but most the time they aren't. I'm referring to the grind to get there, in normal mode items doesn't matter much but once you get past that and start trying to make your way to hell you don't get items that are leveled for you any more you get items that were useful about 10 to 15 levels ago.

Then once you get to the hardest difficulty you have to grind act 1 for gold to buy gear so you can do act 2 because act 1 doesn't drop items that are actually leveled for you. Once you beat act 4 and can start doing the hardest runs for loot ya sometimes you get stuff that is useful but 99% of the time it is under leveled gear.

 

[ciasteczkowyp]

people won't feel that AH is a mandatory part of the game, which in turn will make for better gameplay.

 

[Aircross]

I hope this means that offline play will be available one day since the auction house was pretty much the only reason for a constant connection to the server.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

I'm pretty much in the hardcore casual grinding phase of Dragon's Crown, and we're still having a blast.

I got well over Diablo III during the beta. With my limited experience, I think it's a super good move they remove the AH, but I also still believe the always-on requirement still does not make sense.

I still play (and love) Warcraft III and Starcraft II. I also play LoL. Always-on makes a whole lot of sense there. For a pixel-whacking, button-mashing dungeon crawler, it does not make sense to me. I do not like it. In Dragon's Crown, I can play offline or online as I please. There are many reasons why I normally want to play online now, well past endgame 3.0 and then some. But I just like to have a choice, I like for things to make sense, and I like not being lied to.

 

[Aeshi]

No once you get into the final difficulty, there you can sometimes get items that are useful for you but most the time they aren't. I'm referring to the grind to get there, in normal mode items doesn't matter much but once you get past that and start trying to make your way to hell you don't get items that are leveled for you any more you get items that were useful about 10 to 15 levels ago.

Then once you get to the hardest difficulty you have to grind act 1 for gold to buy gear so you can do act 2 because act 1 doesn't drop items that are actually leveled for you. Once you beat act 4 and can start doing the hardest runs for loot ya sometimes you get stuff that is useful but 99% of the time it is under leveled gear.

I've done a no-AH run[footnote]while playing as a Demon Hunter (which is near universally considered the worse class) to boot[/footnote] without any major difficulties, and I've never had the former problem (most of my gear was at worst 3 levels below me, and at best I'd go through 3 different weapons in the span of about 2 minutes) and never needed to do the latter while playing through Inferno either, so I call BS on both of those.

 

[Eric the Orange]

while playing as a Demon Hunter (which is near universally considered the worse class) to boot

Really. I found Witch Doctor way harder personally. You just gotta know how to kite to play Demon Hunter.

 

[synobal]

No once you get into the final difficulty, there you can sometimes get items that are useful for you but most the time they aren't. I'm referring to the grind to get there, in normal mode items doesn't matter much but once you get past that and start trying to make your way to hell you don't get items that are leveled for you any more you get items that were useful about 10 to 15 levels ago.

Then once you get to the hardest difficulty you have to grind act 1 for gold to buy gear so you can do act 2 because act 1 doesn't drop items that are actually leveled for you. Once you beat act 4 and can start doing the hardest runs for loot ya sometimes you get stuff that is useful but 99% of the time it is under leveled gear.

I've done a no-AH run[footnote]while playing as a Demon Hunter (which is near universally considered the worse class) to boot[/footnote] without any major difficulties, and I've never had the former problem (most of my gear was at worst 3 levels below me, and at best I'd go through 3 different weapons in the span of about 2 minutes) and never needed to do the latter while playing through Inferno either, so I call BS on both of those.

Maybe it has gotten better since it was released, I've not played it at all since the first month it came out. I remember very clearly having to grind like crazy to get gold to buy gear so I could do act 2 inferno.

 

[Aeshi]

while playing as a Demon Hunter (which is near universally considered the worse class) to boot

Really. I found Witch Doctor way harder personally. You just gotta know how to kite to play Demon Hunter.

But the thing is the Wizard has just about all of the Demon Hunter's upsides with none of the downsides, do there isn't any real reason to pick Demon Hunter other than the fact that (at least I think) he looks the coolest

And the "you just need to know how to kite" thing could be said for Witch Doctor as well, and if you're minion-focused you don't even need to do that because said minions will just tie them up.

 

[Hagi]

Might actually buy this game if they also end up removing the always-online requirement or it goes for sale for under 10 bucks including all expansions.