Poor Blizzard. Sometimes, no matter how you try to create something bigger and more complex, something just goes wrong. This week, Blizzard released Patch 1.0.8 for Diablo III and all was well because it had been tested thoroughly.
Except one little add-on that had not been tested in the public realm.
We all know about the Real Money Auction House and how absurd inflation is. The point of the game has essentially become “who can hoard the most gold and who’s willing to pay the most gold.” As a fellow writer here at GameSkinny has pointed out, Blizzard decided to close the Auction House at least for a while in lieu of the gold “duping” fiasco, which you can elucidate yourself with here.
Whenever I played Diablo II or III, I never really liked trading with others or buying from the Auction House. And, while this is just my own opinion, I felt like it was cheating. But a necessary cheating, because the items you typically find are not up to par at higher levels. This frustrated me so much, because it’s a moral and a ‘man-I-need-to-start-kicking-ass-better’ dilemma.
But then, when you’re ready to buy something great, most things are priced in the millions of gold. I guess I’m just frugal in life and in-game, but I don’t want to purchase something I’ll end up needing to upgrade sooner rather than later for that much gold. It just turned into a vicious cycle of mediocre equipment and weaponry.
I believe Diablo and Blizzard don’t need the Auction House. It’s gotten out of control monetarily and more patch flops could end up exploiting people again. Maybe a back-to-basics route needs to happen; taking a look back at Diablo II‘s functions and successes may help the future of Diablo III.
So I want to know what you think: Would it be best is the Auction House went down and stayed down? Or can the Auction House be improved and salvaged?
Published: May 8, 2013 08:31 pm