GL1zdA wrote on Nov 10, 2013, 17:45:

jdreyer wrote on Nov 10, 2013, 13:32:
Blizzard president Mike Morhaime on razing Diablo 3's auction house, rebuilding Titan

"I think our players recognized that. We were really looking to see what would happen with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions, because they don't have an auction house. The response to the console versions was extremely positive, and most people cited the lack of an auction house."

Well, that and the offline mode.

They created the auction house to undercut or compete with black market gold farmers. I get that. The problem is that they took the additional step of designing the loot system so that it forced you to the auction house. That's where they screwed the pooch. Had they made a complete game that stood alone, THEN added in the auction house, I don't think you would have seen nearly the same number of complaints.

I don't think they designed the loot system around the AH. If you remember loot from D2 or LoD, it was similar to what we have got in D3. It was hard to have nice items in D2/LoD without trading, and before 1.10, after several trades, you could have a character who would slay everything on Hell in any location. The same worked in D3, except for insane champions/unique monsters (Invincible-Molter-Jailer and similar), but they simply adjusted the difficulty.

I don't get why people want offline mode in Diablo 3 - a game where you know the story after 10 hours and after that you only look for loot so your character can be more leet than others and you play with others to socialize. Diablo single player is like drinking alone, it's the last step before the border between being a nerd and a lunatic.