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Auction Houses To Be Removed From Diablo III
An anonymous reader writes "When Blizzard built Diablo III, one of the controversial features was the inclusion of an auction house for players to buy and sell gear. On one hand, it created a safe environment for trading, which had been rife with scams in Diablo II. On the other hand, gathering loot was one of the main points of the game, and the auction house trivialized that. According to an announcement on Battle.net, both the Real Money auction house and the Gold auction house will be removed from the game as part of Blizzard's revamp of the loot system in Diablo III. The target date is well ahead of us: March 18, 2014. Blizzard said, 'We feel that this move along with the Loot 2.0 system being developed concurrently with Reaper of Souls will result in a much more rewarding game experience for our players.' Unexpected news, to be sure."
The lack of an auction house is what made D2 (and Borderlands) such a success. Precisely that you had to grind endlessly to perhaps get the good stuff gave people a sense of achievement.
When all anyone needed to do was to flip out the credit card, that disappeared.
P2W does not give much satisfaction.
Yes, it's called trading