"Right now, in the condition it's in D2R Items, it's a fundamentally defective product" John Walker wrote John Walker for RPS. "A single-player game that doesn't suspend, and should you abandon it in play, it will prompt you out and cancel your progress. "

But Blizzard maintained its position and the launch-day catastrophe was the final blow. Adding to the frustration, the requirement of being always online was believed to be tied to a different online function, one that proved the most critical to the game's problems in its early years.

Blizzard had a problem. In previous Diablo games, this capability trading items had created an underground market for loot. The players who were looking for the top gear were willing to pay, but this also left an open door for untrustworthy third-party vendors and price-boggling. Blizzard knew the dangers of an unregulated, non-official marketplace for Diablo itemsand decided it could do it better by having a legitimate, well-regulated one.

"The auction house came out of the desire to recognize third party trading to ensure that traders stay on the field to conduct their trading rather than go to websites run by third parties, and as a result reduce fraud or scams, spamming as well as the money made from hacking the game, making dupes and dupes cheap D2R ladder items," former game director Jay Wilson said in an interview with DiabloII. net after leaving the company.