Blizzard set to shut down Diablo III auction houses

Diablo III was a big hit. It sold millions and millions of copies and remained a headline grabber for many sites and publications for quite some time. Unfortunately though, quite a few of those headlines revolved around gold hacks, or items being stolen from accounts – all of which stemmed from the fact that these items and gold could be sold for real world money in the auction house. To put a final stop to this, Blizzard has now announced that it will be shutting down both the real money and gold auction houses, putting an end to the practice of paying for upgrades, for good.

As it stands now and has done since release, Blizzard has operated both an in-game currency auction house and one that operated on real money. If you choose to use your dollars or pounds to buy an item from someone in-game, then Blizzard takes one dollar/euro/pound free, or a 15 per cent cut, depending on what's being sold. This has understandably been open to exploitation, when someone figures out how to clone an item or get infinite gold. Battling with these problems and dealing with the negative feedback, has evidently been too much for the publishing giant, as both auction houses will be no more.

There's still some time before the official cut off date however, so don't fret, you have until 18th March 2014 to – as Blizzard puts it – “get your affairs in order,” and buy up anything you might want. Ironically, many of the people playing Diablo III right now, will probably have moved on to some other game within the six months it's going to take before the auction house is shut down, but those that remain or come back, will get a different gaming experience.

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Blizzard is calling it – lamely – “Loot 2.0,” and it's coming as part of the Reaper of Souls expansion, which will introduce better drops from most monsters, but it will also reduce their frequency. So you'll be getting less items, but there's a higher chance of them being rarer and more powerful.

On top of that, it will introduce the new heavily armoured Crusader class, a warrior of impressive combat prowess and toughness. It will also increase the level cap, letting you take your heroes further than ever before and open up new areas to fight in, with new monstrous foes, all part of the new Act V of the Diablo III storyline.

Expansion aside however, not everyone is happy with the auction house news. Some believe it will lead to spamming in general chat for item trades, which will of course continue, but on a less organised or centralised scale.

Kitguru Says: I know I probably need to hand in my PC-gamer card now, but I must admit I've never played a Diablo game. Those of you that have though, are you glad to see the auction houses going? Did they ruin the game or did they not really effect you?

[Thanks PCgamesN]

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