Blizzard had a problem. In the previous D2R Items titles, players' capability to trade items created a black market for loot. People who wanted the most expensive equipment were willing to pay, but this also left the doors open to unscrupulous third-party companies and price-slashing. Blizzard was aware of the risks of an unregulated, unofficial marketplace for Diablo items, and thought it could make it more secure with a legit, regulated one.

"The auction house was born out of the desire to legitimize third-party trading, so that players could remain in the game to do their trading rather than visit third-party sites and consequently cut down on fraud, scams spamming, and the profit of hacking the game, making dupes, etc.," former game director Jay Wilson said in an interview with DiabloII.

Net after quit the company. "The problem is, naturally, it legitimized excessive trading. It was too simple. We're all aware of this now, and the consequences. We were concerned about the consequences in the past However, we believed that it would be beneficial to outweigh the disadvantages. [World of Warcraft's auctionhouse] seemed to be a great evidence of concept. Evidently, we were wrong."

The error was due to two major areas. First, the auction house had the option of real money, which allows players to buy loot directly. This aspect opened Blizzard to criticism of engineering low-quality loot drops in order to increase market exchanges, since it took a small portion of each transaction.

Whether or not this was the case, the overall quality cheap diablo 2 resurrected items of loot was extremely poor at launch, and fans were justifiably suspicious--especially given that Blizzard's acquisition from Activision was only a few years old at this point, and longtime Blizzard fans were watchful for any resulting changes in corporate culture.