Too late now!
Turns out all of the people who were up in arms about Diablo III‘s Auction House shenanigans get to say “I told you so” in some form today, as senior Diablo designer Andrew Chambers recently stated that some aspects of the AH are becoming an issue.
Chambers goes on to say, “We don’t really like that, for most players, all of your current gear is very likely to be something you’ve found on the Auction House. This can create a situation where it doesn’t feel like you ‘own’ the gear you’ve obtained; instead, it feels like you are renting it.”
As a result, designers have made newly crafted items bound to your account, to keep people out of the Auction House. Chambers goes on to explain: “Something we discuss frequently is how the Auction House has impacted the game and how we can refocus players away from farming the Auction House and onto farming monsters.”
Well, no matter what side of the fence you’re on, we can all agree that the Auction House is a thing that happened, and it wasn’t thought all the way through. It was implemented, and people took advantage of it, to the point where Blizzard barely has any control left of part of their own game. Hopefully they manage to get everything under control by the time the first expansion hits, and make Diablo III the game they really want it to be.
You do know an expansion is still coming, right? Despite all the fan blacklash, it’s too successful to quit now.
Ask the Devs Round 1 [Blizzard via VG247]
