I'm fairly certain that D3 was originally built around the auction house. They started with a solid stream of monetization and then built a game around that.
The thing about D3 though is that Blizzard continued to take feedback from the community and iterate through the game by adjusting and introducing new game mechanics with each update. The current 2.4 is so far different from the original release that its shocking. I played at the start and quickly got tired of the horrible drops and Auction House. Now the variety of entertaining builds that are possible is huge. I'm playing Season 5 and my friends have started again too. It's great for both short (<10min) sessions as well as long ones.
sangaya|10 years ago
toast42|10 years ago