As reported via PC Gamer Diablo IV Items, some former Blizzard and Blizzard North employees held an audience at last weekend's Portland Retro Gaming Expo. During that panel, the group of ex- Blizz designers discussed the history of Diablo and their personal connections to the games, and shared their stories of developing the famous franchise. On the panel, the former lead designer of Diablo 3, Jay Wilson discussed the controversial auction house, describing its origins and more.

"When I was working at Blizzard," said Wilson, "the reason for doing the auction house in real money was to ensure security. It wasn't about money. We didn't imagine that we'd earn any money off it. The main issue in Diablo 2 was item duping and duping hacks along with all that gold selling, as well as all those things."

As Wilson explained, Blizzard's solution to avoid this problem with Diablo 3 was to take charge of the trading market. This apparently was also why the game made the decision to require an all-time-online internet connection. Wilson states that when you offer an offline client, hackers "got you." This is why you must be always available and the auction house was Blizzard's attempt at controlling problems from Diablo 2.

But pretty quickly after its release in 2012 the auction house of Diablo 3 was recognized as one the games biggest flaws, being constantly mocked and critiqued by the community. However, removing it wasn't an easy task as it wasn't due to technical issues. The reason for its sluggish 2014 removal was due to the auction house an enticement feature of the game printed on all of its retail boxes as well as there were legal issues to cut it off.

"The reason we did not eliminate it the moment we realized it was a problem is legally we didn't think we could because it was mentioned on the packaging," said Wilson. "So we actually took a long time to figure out all the legal issues before we finally said , 'OK we think it's worth the effort, if we get a lawsuit, well Diablo 4 Items for sale.'"