May 8, 2013 will forever live on in the memory of Diablo 3 fans as the day the game's economy was officially broken. After the release of the 1.0.8 patch to Diablo 3, a gold exploit was discovered, allowing a small portion of players to generate billions of gold in the game's Auction House.
While the patch had only been live for a few hours, a great deal of damage had been done, and Activision Blizzard took the Auction House offline to repair what was left of a broken in-game economy. Diablo 3 relies on both its Gold and Real-Money Auction Houses to not only monetize the experience for players (and for the developer), but to also keep excess and duplicate items flowing from one interested buyer / seller to another. Honest players can earn a profit and spend their earnings on better gear, while beginning players can purchase rare or special items without having to search for them manually.
While Blizzard reports that the gold duplication glitch has been found and squashed, the game's economy is still in shambles and the Auction House is still offline, hours after Blizzard predicted it would relaunch. Much of the delay has come from Blizzard choosing not to roll back the servers and to instead allow many existing auctions to expire naturally. A large-scale rollback would inflict damage on the entire community, punishing even players that had no interest or activity in the glitch's exploitation.
"We are still in the process of reviewing all of Tuesday's transactions and need to keep the Auction House offline for a while longer to complete our audit. At this time, we will not be able to bring the Auction House online by 10:00 a.m. PDT. We're re-evaluating required downtime, and will provide another update by 12:00 p.m. PDT."
As of this writing, all basic Gold trading has also been taken offline, with no ETA for when that system will be reactivated. While this may be inconvenient for players, the delay is understandable. Instead of a full wipe, Blizzard is taking the time to examine each Auction transaction, and each Gold trade made after the launch of the 1.0.8 patch, looking for suspicious activity. We expect to receive more updates on this issue as the day / week rolls on.
