As promised, Diablo III‘s hotly-debated auction house disappears for good on Tuesday, June 24. Both the gold and real money auction houses have been effectively closed since March, with no new transactions occurring since then, but the shuttered stalls remained for players to collect any unclaimed gold or items remaining from prior auctions. Tomorrow marks their final and permanent removal from the game, so be sure to grab anything you may have left behind.
The Auction House was a source of controversy since the game’s launch. Blizzard included the feature to forestall the third-party item markets that plagued Diablo II, offering a safe, officially-condoned channel for commerce. However, many players argued (and the developers ultimately conceded) that while being able to buy that perfect piece of loot was certainly more convenient, it undermined the core gameplay of killing monsters and finding treasure. The introduction of Loot 2.0 and the Reaper of Souls expansion in March reconfigured item drops and pulled focus back to the gameplay itself, and nearly everyone agrees now that the game is much better for it.
With the first major content patch since Reaper coming down the pipe, there has never been a better time to suit up and hunt down the Prime Evils, so let’s be glad to finally put that dark chapter behind us.