Real-time money transactions aren't a novelty by any stretch or imagination. D2R didn't pioneer them and it's disingenuous to present that as truth. Blizzard's action-RPG isn't the root of the problem, but instead is the worst amalgamation of hundreds of free-to-play mobile and PC games. It comes with two distinct Battle Passes, each of which comes with different rewards, each exclusive to a character (and not to your entire roster) as well as too many different currencies for the average player to keep track of D2R Items market reads like a huge mobile marketplace.
The practices, even if they're faced with opposition but have now become commonplace in the gaming industry in general. One could argue that prevalence of loot boxes or other real-money transactions within AAA games have been a factor in this predatory economy -- but the more that AAA gaming shifts towards a models of games-as services is the more it has similarities with smartphones that've been within this highly popular realm for nearly a decade.
And this isn't just reflected in the use paid currency to purchase items however, it is also evident in gacha mechanics as well as in the public disclosure of drop rates for the more scarce items. Gacha is the practice of using in-game currency, whether it's free or acquired via an in-game store, to acquire something random objects, in the case of Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia or characters from the ever popular (and persistant) Fate/Grand Order or Genshin Impact.
In the case of Diablo Immortal, it's the use of Legendary Crests (which can be obtained or bought) to increase the chance of a 5-star gem appearing in the dungeons and dungeons endgame. While it's not exactly traditional in its presentation (most gacha are performed by "rolling" on a short-lived banner) the players are engaging with the kind of randomness similar. In many ways, the Diablo series has been building towards these types of mechanics from its beginnings, according to a piece Maddy Myers wrote a few weeks ago.
D2R also, in simple terms, draws direct inspiration from the "feeding" method that many Japanese, Korean, and Chinese mobile games have been utilizing for more than a decade. "Feeding" involves increasing the stats, attributes or the rarity of an item by getting a duplicate of a drop. These duplicates then are fed to an item with the same rarity in order to increase the stats overall of that cheap D2R Items item. Generally, five copies are required according to industry standards to max the character or item.
