The Auction House for Diablo 3 is not going anywhere but an upcoming patch at least intends to limit its appeal. On August 21st, Blizzard announced the game's first expansion pack, "Reaper of Souls", along with a free patch for the base game to accompany its release. The most noted feature, at least for both Diablo III and its expansion, is the so-called "Loot 2.0". Blizzard hopes acquiring new items within the game will, once again, be more rewarding than trading.

Trading items, especially for real money, was designed as a last resort. Unofficial stores can be found scattered throughout the internet for other persistent multiplayer titles. These vendors could be shady, both for customers as well as their employees. A canonized auction house helps limits these outlets

A new mode, "Loot Run", will be included with the expansion. A randomly generated dungeon is created to provide about 15-20 minutes of pure treasure hunting. Each experience will be complete with an end boss which, too, will be entirely random for that instance. It does not seem like it will make it into the vanilla Diablo 3 patch.

Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls is expected to launch some time in 2014 following the free update to the base game.