Diablo 3 took so long to get rid of its auction house because 'it was on the box'

pcgamer.com:

Three former Blizzard and Blizzard North grandees gave a panel talk this past weekend at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, discussing the Diablo series and their respective roles in its history. Matt Householder was a producer, Matt Uelmen did music and sound design, while Jay Wilson had various roles before becoming lead designer on Diablo 3.

The timeline gets pretty interesting around the mid-2000s when, essentially, World of Warcraft is taking off and Blizzard North has just been closed (the studio's last day was August 1, 2005). It was around this period that Jay Wilson joined Blizzard, and the Diablo 3 that Blizzard North had been working on was moved «in-house» under his direction.

One of the areas Wilson discusses is the tradeable rune system that Diablo 3 had at one point, before switching to a more elective system with an element of player choice. «Blizzard at the time was, and this is less true now and I think for the better, so obsessed with perfect game design,» says Wilson.

«I would describe it like… if you look at Ferrari, they will make a car unlivable in order that it goes round a corner 0.1 second faster. Lamborghini just wants the car to look cool and go fast. Sometimes that's better but we wanted that perfect design so, if we found a flaw, we got rid of it.»

Wilson clearly retains a fondness for the older system, and this is where he finds the fault in that perfectionist mindset. He says Path of Exile is an example where it does «a great job with similar systems [and] it has problems but it's great fun so who cares.»

Talk then moved onto Diablo 3's more controversial elements: the «always online» requirement, and the real money auction house.

«When I was at Blizzard the reason for doing the real money