Blizzard announced today via the Diablo III website that both the real money and gold auction house will be closing in March 2014. Josh Mosquiera and John Hight took to the Diablo blog to explain their reasoning behind this decision.
When we first set up the Auction House, it was meant to be a safe and convenient way for you to trade items, and in that aspect it was successful. But it became a double-edged sword.
The Auction House is described as detracting from the main focus of Diablo III, “killing monsters for cool loot”. I could not agree more. Being able to buy what others spent hours to farm does in fact seem to detract from the experience especially when the endgame is not diverse enough to give any sort of insanely new experience. More information will be announced at Blizzcon. With the 2.0 patch enroute and the expansion I’m ready to fire up Diablo III again. Who’s with me?
Oh, and here’s the video from their blog as well: