Diablo III's Auction House Is Shuttng Down

@iragequit: So let them skip it? If they don't want to play the damn game who cares? It's like EA's "Pay Money To Bypass Playing The Game And Get This Stuff". It's a waste of money but if people are paying, who cares?

okay. well I was holding out on getting the ps3 version because of the auction house .but now that its leaving i will probably go with the ps3 version .

Because

A) It affects the overall loot drop design, which if you read this comment section people have already pointed out made later difficulties and endgame into a grinder where your chances of getting good gear to upgrade by yourself were slim to 0 (mostly 0), in order to make AH trading relevant. Blizzard even pretty much just said so themselves. AH isn't some standalone thing that is separate from the game, it directly affected game design for everyone even those who choose not to participate. (seriously read the comments, your question has already been answered several times)

B) It's a different type of game, in Diablo there is nothing except the challenge and the loot, you take away the loot aspect and the difficulty of getting it and you remove the other by proxy; while say unlocking guns in BF3 doesn't really change it's competitive nature nor the reason people are playing it in the first place. (if we are talking about not just D3 normal mode but as a thing people play for a long time)

C) The scenario you mention is generally shitty too. Because to make something worth bypassing it has to be made enough of a chore for people to consider bypassing it. It's game design getting directly affected or changed just to try and squeeze more money out of people, rather then just making a better product. If you think pay for progress only affects people who do pay for it you are sorely mistaken. Sometimes it's intrusiveness can be minimal sure (like say in the BF3 unlocks example mentioned before) other times we see where that path can eventually lead, like say PvZ2.

Blizzard has been dropping the ball left and right recently. This is the first time I've actually heard them come out and say "sorry dudes, we messed up." and that's great. I just wish they listened to the gamers in the first place. We clearly know better than them when it comes to certain things. This is why I actually see what MS has been doing recently as a positive. Sure, they're flip floping like crazy, and that's probably a bad sign, but regardless of that we are getting a console more like what we wanted.

I don't really see any hope for Blizz going on though, outside of them just scooping up endless amounts of money. They're more like the devs that puke out the same games over and over now, only blizzard doesn't know they can do this on a yearly basis the way CoD is done. SC2, Diablo and the last WoW expansions have all been either just clones of their previous games (SC2 most of all) or shoddy continuation of series, Pandaria (and to a certain extent Cataclysm, which ruined the old world that most of us had a fondness for because we had lived there for countless hours.) and D3 which was also a continuation on a game, a continuation done extremely poorly. That game was easy and boring to begin with on the first difficulty. Add the AH into that, which meant I didn't need to look for weapons. Every drop I got was garbage compared to what I'd got off the AH for next to nothing. But hey, at least gold became useful for once. In the end, the AH was what gave that game meaning.

Check out Path of Exile if you want a proper ARPG. Still in beta but it's far beyond D3 in most aspects already.

It's a bummer seeing a developer I used to love reduced to a sequel grinder. Especially when the sequels offer nothing new and is often released without the full feature set. PVP is still not in D3 more than a year after launch. A feature they promised would be implemented shortly after release. If this wasn't Blizzard people would be going mental, but seeing as Blizzard still has an avid fan base they garnered during the years when they made great games they can do pretty much whatever they want and the fanbase nods and waits. That was OK back in the day when Blizz actually came out with super polished stuff. Both SC2 and D3 came without all features in the game, so the mythical "Blizzard polish" seems to have gone up in smoke. You can't release half a game, or a game with tons of missing UI and online features (SC2) and still keep the "we only release games when they're done" image. That belongs solely to Valve now. Blizzard, you've been demoted.

I guess it stopped making money and they can shut it down for some sort of late positive publicity.

If they had cared about the experience that people were having with their game I'm sure they would have done this a long time ago, since it was apparent from the very start that it was undermining the way that the game was being played with everyone just buying gear. Not to say that just buying something is less bad than the need to run bosses over and over again to get worthwhile gear, but still.

So they finally realized what actually playing the game is all about? And here I thought that was 101 Diablo knowledge.

Pretty weird, but commendable of them to come out in a video and claim being wrong about the decision, but ultimately strange that they're using it as a vehicle to advertise their expansion.

oh man, the auction house was the only reason i played this. I doesnt matter though, as there will be un-official auction houses on the net the day it shuts down.

Sheeeit! Why wait?

Shut the fucking thing down right now.

I hated the feature the moment I heard it, maybe Blizz can use me as a bad idea detector. I don't charge much;)

Shut it down right now, in my opinion... just move all the items people have on there into their stash or have it automatically drop on the ground for them to pick up when they log in.

Well, I don't give a fuck anymore since my account was suspended because I spent too much money in the auction house at once.

It will never happen. The loot will still be .0001% DR for anything of use.

They already took step one with the console loot distribution being much improved.

Secondly Blizzard described exactly how they are changing and fixing the loot during Gamescom. A good portion of it will dynamically alter stats to be relevant to your class when it drops. As well as implementing a system to re-roll 1 stat per item at will with the new crafter as much as you want.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYbt27bRMqs

@llexan: wow

I don't know what to say about this one.

I hope they fix the loot if they're going to take out the auction house.