What Blizzard had on its hands was one feature that fans didn't like D2R ladder items, that existed mostly to provide the technical basis of another feature that users did not like.
The company was reassessing and decided how to move forward with Diablo during the following months after the launch, they quickly concluded that Auction House did not "doing damage to Diablo," said Wilson. This harm was manifested in the gold and real money variants of Auction House, as it affected the fundamental gameplay loop of Diablo.
Why bother hunting down monsters and demons when you can simply buy the same or better equipment? The team wasn't certain whether shutting down the feature was even a possibility. The reasoning was practical as player records showed that a large number of players were actually using the feature and they didn't want to upset them. Also, it was legal, as it was advertised on the box.
Blizzard determined that both the real money and gold Auction Houses had to be removed but it's not enough to just leave an Auction House-shaped space in the game's layout. The team began planning an update of a greater scale. The update would incorporate suggestions by Josh Mosqueira, who initially joined to oversee the console versions. He was later promoted to game director in 2013.
The Auction House's demise would be paired with an overhaul to all of the game's key system, and the release of console-based versions and the game's premier (and only) significant expansion Reaper of Souls. One of the most talked about features was to the loot system and the loot system, which Blizzard has dubbed "Loot 2. 0"--a huge change intended to make loot drop more rewarding. It was supposed to be the beginning of a whole new era of Diablo.
"We truly believe that by closing down real-money as well as the gold auction houses, it opens the way to ensure that killing monsters in-game is the most satisfying as well as the most exciting method of acquiring these buy diablo 2 resurrected items," said Josh Mosqueira in a video that announced the change.
