The auction house was just a terrible, awful idea. It became pretty obvious that they broke the entire premise of the game loop: do farming runs, try to get go

The auction house was just a terrible, awful idea. It became pretty obvious that they broke the entire premise of the game loop: do farming runs, try to get good gear that aligns with your targeted build, get real excited when that thing you were chasing suddenly falls into your lap, update build and go for more loot to realize it further. Instead you would just grind hoping for general "good" things, flip them on the AH for gold, then use that money to buy the exact thing you wanted from said AH for your build. Completely killed the little human spark from the loot roulette that basically underpins why people play it.