Diablo releases to consoles, and with it, the announcement that the auction houses, both real money and in-game, would be closed. All in all, it was a bad idea.Ĭut to last year. In needing to balance the quality of drops to support an auction house economy, both the quality and amount of useable drops were reduced to a fraction of what they needed to be. Purported to help ease the grind in the late game, Blizzard had no idea that it's end result would be to actually rob the game of its core mechanic, the search for better loot. When it was released in 2012, one of the core offerings Diablo III shipped with were in-game and real money auction houses.