Auction House to be removed from Diablo 3

[myxomatosis]

Good move Blizzard... late but better than nothing ;)

[Shadrack]

I think that this will really improve the game.  The AH kills the progression of difficulty in the game.  If the game at any point becomes challenging, a quick trip to the AH and 2-3 small upgrades and now the game is easy-cakes again.  This makes the various modes of difficulty and Monster Power levels completely arbitrary and there is no real sense of accomplishment by completing any challenges in the game at a higher difficulty if all that you had to do to beat it is spend a little gold on the AH.

 

In hardcore mode, the AH was a bit more fun because the challenge of not dying, ever, is there.  Also with everyone always leveling in HC mode, selling and buying low level items was funner.  Still, this needs to be done and I'm glad Blizzard finally came to their senses about it.

[Kalint]

It just means the well dried up.

[HawkMan]

I think that this will really improve the game.  The AH kills the progression of difficulty in the game.  If the game at any point becomes challenging, a quick trip to the AH and 2-3 small upgrades and now the game is easy-cakes again.  This makes the various modes of difficulty and Monster Power levels completely arbitrary and there is no real sense of accomplishment by completing any challenges in the game at a higher difficulty if all that you had to do to beat it is spend a little gold on the AH.

 

In hardcore mode, the AH was a bit more fun because the challenge of not dying, ever, is there.  Also with everyone always leveling in HC mode, selling and buying low level items was funner.  Still, this needs to be done and I'm glad Blizzard finally came to their senses about it.

The problem is that the stuff you buy at the AH is stuff that should have dropped for you. As the game was at launch when I played through it the first week was just stupid. Items that dropped where much lower than me. To get a good item I would have had to redo each level 30 times, and even then the drops would be to low.

[Shadrack]

The problem is that the stuff you buy at the AH is stuff that should have dropped for you. As the game was at launch when I played through it the first week was just stupid. Items that dropped where much lower than me. To get a good item I would have had to redo each level 30 times, and even then the drops would be to low.

 

The drop rates were terrible on release.  They have since improved the drop rates to the point that at least making it to Inferno difficulty w/o ever using the AH is possible (but not really so much on HC mode).  It isn't uncommon (in my experience) to see 1-2 legendary drops that are actually decent for some class (most likely not yours) in the first play through on normal.

 

On launch it was pretty much impossible to farm your own gear once you beat Hell difficulty.  Act 1 didn't drop items with a high enough item level to ever complete Act 1.  It was ridiculous.  Even Hell was a real challenge without visiting the AH, but after many many deaths I pushed through it on my Barb despite the ridicule from friends because I wasn't using the AH.  Really bad decision making on Blizzards part and it was pretty obvious that the motivation for low drop rates were to force everyone to use the gold AH or worse the pay-to-win AH.  Sad to think how much further along the game would be if they had made this decision a year ago.

[Bryan R.]

It was just stupid to try playing this game with any amount of seriousness. I would go through the game just fine on normal, and then getting to Hell was a nice challenge at first but soon it became impossible. At the time, I figured the game was designed to replay levels casually to farm gear. I'm okay with that but it didn't work that way. No matter how many times I replayed the same levels over and over I never got a drop that meant jack squat to me. It's all garbage that I ended up selling to vendors. It was so obvious to anyone who played the game where the problems lay. It really made me wonder if Blizzard was playing their own game to the end-game. Like I said, I can appreciate the replayability of the game, but the loot system has completely undermined this making it just a terrible experience. Auction house doesn't solve anything, it just makes up for a shi**y loot system and Blizzard should have known this.