Aside from contentious aesthetic differences and the week of madness that was error 37, Diablo 3's bigger problems didn't become apparent until you made your way to its higher difficulty levels, where it became an endless grind for loot that was rarely exciting and almost never useable. Thanks to a controversial real-money auction house, Diablo 3 became a game about scraping together enough money to buy the items you actually wanted rather than earning them in your conquests. And even if you managed to do just that, the higher difficulty levels weren't challenging as much as they were a never ending corridor of punishment to shoulder through for little reward.

Blizzard took a big beating by its fans, with former game director Jay Wilson even confessing his feelings that the auction house "really hurt the game." In the two years that followed, Blizzard scrapped the auction house system entirely and greatly improved how Diablo 3 played at later levels. The entire endgame was restructured around a new set of flexible difficulty levels that you could change at will and the loot and classes were both overhauled to create a journey that was rewarding every step of the way. With the launch of Reaper of Souls, Diablo 3 finally emerged as a game worthy of its predecessors.