Ding dong, the witch is dead. Ever since the idea was first revealed by Blizzard, the auction house in Diablo III has been readily panned by players for undermining the core gameplay of killing a load of things to amass a load of stuff. In a surprise announcement, Blizzard has announced that the auction houses, both real money and the fake kind, will be shut down on March 18th, 2014.
When we initially designed and implemented the auction houses, the driving goal was to provide a convenient and secure system for trades. But as we’ve mentioned on different occasions, it became increasingly clear that despite the benefits of the AH system and the fact that many players around the world use it, it ultimately undermines Diablo’s core game play: kill monsters to get cool loot. With that in mind, we want to let everyone know that we’ve decided to remove the gold and real-money auction house system from Diablo III.
The update will go hand in hand with the Loot 2.0 system coming with the first Diablo III expansion.
(Source: Diablo III)
MMO Fallout 
This is laughable. The power of the echo chamber at Blizz must be immense. There’s no possible way in hell they didn’t realize that the current design undermines the core gameplay. There’s just no way to not see that except to be blinded by arrogance and work within an environment where no one will disagree to the point of affecting change.
Just unbelievable.
Not to defend Blizzard, but you would be amazed to see how confident and stubborn the creative minds can be that their ideas will work, no matter how obvious it is that the idea has no chance in hell of going over well. I’m sure there was someone at Blizzard who thought that this would work out, and that person should not be in charge of making important decisions.
The bit about an environment where no one will disagree is true, and is present in a lot of work fields. Unfortunately the other side is that the people who are willing to criticize end up being punished, as I found out in my last job.