Blizzard is finally getting rid of the auction houses in ‘Diablo III’

One of the most maligned features in Diablo III is the auction house, and for good reason. It actively ruined the experience and took time away from smashing skeletons so you could go play on an imaginary stock market. Blizzard has said as much publicly and now they are finally doing something about it. In a blog post on battle.net, Blizzard announced that both the gold and real money auction houses will be turned off on March 18th, 2014. The date was probably chosen to coincide with the release of Diablo 3’s upcoming expansion Reaper of Souls but that’s just guessing on my part.

However, it isn’t all good news. No, PC gamers, this does not mean the online-requirement will be going away. In fact, according to Blizzard, that will never happen. They’re reasoning for this is because when designing the game co-op was the intended state of play. When asked about this earlier this month,  Diablo game director Joshua Mosqueira had this to say: “On PC, we really want players to feel they’re part of the bigger Blizzard and Diablo community.” So, if you want to play the game without being tied to your wi-fi connection, you’re better off just sticking with the recently released console version. As an added bonus, you won’t have to wait for the auction house to be gutted from that version.

Source: Blizzard (via The PA Report)