Diablo 3 auction house to be shut down on March 18

One of the most controversial features of Diablo 3, the auction house, seems to be on its way out. Blizzard’s John Hight announced through a post on the Battle.net blog that the auction house (AH) will be shut down on March 18 next year.

Hight reveals that this is because of the new Loot 2.0 system that is making its way to Diablo 3 in the upcoming Reaper of Souls expansion pack. The March 18 date also gives us a rough idea of when we can expect to see the expansion pack itself (around March or April?). The new Loot 2.0 system will concentrate on giving a player lower amounts, but overall much better loot.

According to Hight, “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.” This is quite true, since the auction house has seen almost universal criticism because of how trivial it makes finding gear.

Since the auction house is going, you can also say goodbye to the real money auction house where players could buy or sell in-game items for real money. Originally, Blizzard added it in so as to curb the black market sales of in-game items through shady and otherwise untrustworthy channels. However, it turned out to be another source of criticism against the game.

It is worth noting that the recently-released PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game lack the auction house in any capacity. They also lack the always-online requirement that the PC version of Diablo 3 has.