Absolute worst issue with d3 was the exploit where you used the npc, can't remember which npc it was now, but it was one of the npc's you had with you for a quest. You let that npc kill the mobs in act 4 on a bridge in the start and then you got to a checkpoint, This opened up a lot of farming possibilities later in act 4. chests etc, that dropped better loot on inferno. Now only a few tryhards had used this and then blizzard fixed the exploit and didn't rollback the people who exploited. Now the rest were stuck behind unkillable mobs on inferno, while the others were farming freely. They controlled the auction house
Despite all the bad press, the real-money AH wasn't a problem at all. The gold AH was a major problem. The market was region-wide, covering hundreds of thousands of players, and thus extremely efficient. Meaning, low prices for good gear, only GREAT gear was expensive. Thus it was (by far) the best way to gear up. You progressed by killing monsters for gold and then buying gear on the AH. It short-circuited the entire gameplay loop and destroyed the skinner-box reward mechanism integral to ARPGs (and WoW too, for that matter). Imagine if the easiest, cheapest, fastest, and most optimal way to get itemlvl 240 gear in WoW was to buy it on the AH, and only ilvl 250+ gear was expensive. And buying the ilvl 250+ gear, the same stuff you get from mythic raids and highest M+ now, was the optimal way to gear up at the highest tier too. Would you still want to play?
All I heard was : "D3 WAS RUSHED THAT'S THE FAULT"Well, I got agree... PLUS... it was bad directed (not by him...)
"We needed more player testing"Why are so many other devs able to not have any player testing, or very little, and get away with a much more balanced and well put together product. Yet blizzard does loads of it, then says they needed even more, and still can't balance worth a damn in anything they do?
D3 was in development for 11 years, not sure how much longer they needed.