As reported through PC Gamer, some former Diablo 4 Items Blizzard and Blizzard North employees were part of a panel during last weekend's Portland Retro Gaming Expo. On the panel, the group of ex- Blizz designers discussed the history of Diablo and their own connections to the games. They also shared stories about making the popular franchise. During the panel, former lead designer of Diablo 3, Jay Wilson, talked about the controversial auction house, describing its beginnings and more.
"When I was at Blizzard," said Wilson, "the reason for doing the auction house in real money was security. This wasn't about money. We weren't expecting to earn any money off it. The main problem in Diablo 2 was item duping and duping hacks as well as all Gold sellers and the other things."
According to Wilson explained, Blizzard's solution to overcome this issue with Diablo 3 was to take control of the trading market. This is also one of the reasons behind the game's move to require an always-online internet connection. Wilson claims that once you make an offer to an offline client, hackers "got the game." Always on the internet and the auction house were Diablo 4 Boosting Blizzard's unsuccessful attempts to control the problems that came from Diablo 2.