Diablo 3 shutting down auction house in March 2014
Diablo III's auction house may make it very easy to buy all sorts of shiny hats and swords but oh wait no that's awful, the dream of scoring 'phat loot' (as the kids say) is what keeps people coming back to Diablo. Or not, in the case of D3. So it's going. So long! Goodbye. Blizzard is shutting down both the gold and real-money auction houses on March 18, 2014.
Diablo III's auction house may make it very easy to buy all sorts of shiny hats and swords but oh wait no that's awful, the dream of scoring 'phat loot' (as the kids say) is what keeps people coming back to Diablo. Or not, in the case of D3. So it's going. So long! Goodbye. Blizzard is shutting down both the gold and real-money auction houses on March 18, 2014.
"When we initially designed and implemented the auction houses, the driving goal was to provide a convenient and secure system for trades," Blizzard said in today's announcement. "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."
While Blizzard has planned for a while to encourage farming and lure people away from the auction house, saying only a few weeks ago that it intended to "cut the legs out from" it, the developer now plans to pull the plug. Together with the 'Loot 2.0' item revamp coming alongside the Reaper of Souls expansion, this should make getting fancy shoes a lot more satisfying.
Here's game director Josh Mosqueira and production director John Hight to explain more:
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replyAlice O'Connor posted a new article, Diablo 3 shutting down auction house in March 2014.
Diablo III's auction house may make it very easy to buy all sorts of shiny hats and swords but oh wait no that's awful, the dream of scoring 'phat loot' (as the kids say) is what keeps people coming back to Diablo. Or not, in the case of D3. So it's going. So long! Goodbye. Blizzard is shutting down both the gold and real-money auction houses on March 18, 2014.-
About time. They should have realized they they needed to address the isue with gold/item spam that plagued D2 ingame, not to build a tool to encourage item/stock market mentality. Diablo never needed that aspect in the first place.
Only thing missing now is the "ironborn" mode that some has suggested, that would not allow you to trade at all if you chose to play in that mode. I would.-
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I remember Garnett going completely livid when RMAH was announced. That was sometime in 2011, right?
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All signs point in that direction yes. Incorporatiing the server into a local client is quite a huge task when the framework is based on server/client. A huge investment considering that it works so well as it is now (unless you have poor internet connection that is, which some has).
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The Console version was built with offline play in mind. The PC version was not, so they are structured completely differently.
With that being said, if calling bullshit loud enough gets us and offline mode, I'll also call bullshit.
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And millions of D3 fans scream out, "I told you so!" from the comforts on their collective homes. Everyone and anyone with half a brain knew that it was a stupid decision to have the AH in the first place. Dumb.
If they actually tweaked (or Tweak via the Loot 2.0 system coming up in the expansion) the loot so that you actually get good stuff more regularly, the game would have been far better received than it already was. -
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Milk that cow right up till the release of RoS, then get moneyhats from all of the returning players. Good show Blizzard.
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Not enough hate. Come on people, am I the only one who found the painfully bad story telling to be the worst part of D3?
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It was bad, for sure. But the expansion might be able to band-aid it enough that it's not as overpowering.
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AITOO who is thinking about deleting all my characters and starting over in March?
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That sounds kinda awesome. Not sure if I'll start my DH over, but I'm also not sure if I ever want to play my DH again.
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I will definitely start a new character with a class I haven't played yet. I haven't been able to play much this year so I only have a couple characters anyway.
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Next on the list, StarCraft Ghost
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I wonder what I should do with all my gold. I assume there won't be money sinks to absorb the trillions of gold out there.
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This will vastly improve the game IMO.
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GREAT! Seems like the expansion is bringing a lot of good all around.
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If the expansion adds more randomization to the world and maybe some more memorable music I'll be completely happy.
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You think they'll also make WoW less of a shitty amusement park in the next expansion too?
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It depends. What did they do with Jay Wilson?
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He stepped down from his position on the Diablo 3 team. He probably moved to the WoW team to help them develop more panda ideas.
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In that case the magic 8 ball says "The outlook is not good."
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Agreed.
You know, Jay Wilson had some not-so-bright ideas but you WOULD think that the people that are higher up at Blizzard would say "hey this sucks, go back to the drawing board" but yet they put their stamp of approval on the changes and now they undoing it.
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WoW is probably the best-playing game now that it's ever been. We've just seen and done it all and the stuff they add no longer does it for many of the people who've been playing for 9 years.
But damn, if I were to tell a complete noob to MMOs what game they should go for that would be the most competently constructed, polished, and fun to play? I'd still tell them WoW every single time.
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This is a beautiful and extremely rare thing. Despite the financial benefit Blizzard receives from the RMAH they are instead going to support actual game-play. Square risked this also with FFXIV:ARR.
At the moment I can't think of any over developers that have done that, with a game released in the wild.
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Blizzard's reputation and brand are far, far more valuable to them than whatever revenues they're getting from the RMAH.
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It doesn't erase the fact that people have already got pimped out characters based on items they bought for pennies, items that are best in slot.
AH was a fucking stupid idea right from the off. Removing it so long after release is a zero impact choice.-
Except they're likely removing for the expansion which will render many of those items obsolete.
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"Zero impact choice" my ass, that is stupid. There's an expansion coming with increased level cap, and even if it wasn't, what would prevent Blizzard from making some itemization changes that would add even better drops to the game?
This change directly translates to me getting my new gear, be that for old chars in the expansion or for new chars whenever, from drops instead of getting 95% of it from AH. As bloody far from zero impact as one can get.
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