Diablo III: Reaper of Souls - Blizzard's Redemption

EuroGamer has a new article about Blizzzard and their road to redemption.

"The Auction House is a very complicated conversation..."

Josh Mosqueira, like Blizzard teammate Kevin Martens, is holding a bottle of beer, occasionally tapping it on the table at which we're chatting about Reaper of Souls, the upcoming Diablo 3 expansion. It is the end of the day, Gamescom 2013 will soon be over, and there's a spark of excitement in the room. Josh (game director) and Kevin (lead content designer) crave fresh air, sunshine and escape from the bowels of Blizzard's Koelnmesse business center booth, but, to their credit, they never let it show. They're here for the long haul. New character class The Crusader, almost motionless save for his expanding and collapsing chest, watches over us from within a giant TV like some virtual dungeon keeper.

Complicated indeed.

The Diablo 3 Auction House. Once the drama over Diablo 3's catastrophic May 2012 launch calmed and the servers powering the long-awaited always-online action role-playing game whirred at top speed, the shocking reality of the Auction House hammered home. Scores of hours in, on harder difficulties and after yet another act four run later, players realised Diablo 3's itemisation was broken, and the Auction House was the only answer.

In basic terms, in Diablo 3 the items you really want very rarely drop, so off to the Auction House everybody goes to bid virtual, and sometimes real, money. Players who need more powerful equipment to combat Diablo 3's harder challenges feel forced to use it - and that's the problem. The fact the console version doesn't have the Auction House suggests Blizzard agrees. And yet, here we are, chatting about the upcoming expansion, and it's clear the Auction House is here to stay.