The issue was rooted in two major D2R Items areas. The first was that auction houses included an actual-money component that allowed players to purchase loot in real money. This feature opened Blizzard to criticism of its design of poor-quality loot drops to maximize trade-offs since it took a small amount of each transaction.

Whether or not this was the case, the overall quality of loot was extremely poor at launch, and fans were justifiably suspicious--especially given that Blizzard's acquisition from Activision was only a few years old at this point, and longtime Blizzard fans were watchful for any resulting changes in corporate culture.

Additionally, the existence of a real-money marketplace made anti-cheat measures essential for the overall health of gaming. If a person could produce something of value infinitely, like, say, that would cause fraud and ultimately drive down the value of products.

This is part of the"always online" component that caused players to be frustrated in the opening days. If you're online all the time, the system will constantly look for errors like duplication glitches but that didn't help those who wanted to play offline feel any better.

What Blizzard could have had was a feature that fans didn't enjoy, which was mostly in order to facilitate the technical underpinnings of another feature that fans weren't happy with.

The company was reassessing and made a decision on how to proceed with Diablo within the following months after the launch, they quickly concluded that Auction House had been "doing harm to the game" said Wilson. The problem was apparent in both the real-money and buy diablo II resurrected items variants of Auction House, as it caused a disruption to the gameplay of Diablo.