'''Bind on Equip''' [[item]]s are designed so that they can only be used by the character that first equips them. They can not be traded once they have been equipped, often called "[[soulbound]]", or "bound" to that player. The item can normally be sold to a [[vendor]], however. This is a common method used by game developers (particularly for persistent-world [[MMO]]s) to control the economy within the game.

As of April, 2011, Bind on Equip items will no longer be in the game. [[Bashiok]] gave the reasoning for this in a [[battle.net]] forum post: <blue>Yeah, we realized that binding is kind of a crappy way to pull items out of the economy. If you say that the average player produces 100 items an hour and maybe gets 1 upgrade in that time, then binding at best can account for removing 1% of items from the economy. And that's being very generous at high levels.  Binding isn't really substantial in making a viable economy, but it is really good at establishing item prestige. Which is how it's used in WoW.  We expect salvaging to be compelling enough to remove a good percentage of the most valuable items from the economy. High end components obtained from salvaging high end items are needed for high end crafting and enhancement.  We're not promising anything on patch content, but we also feel that keeping up on introducing new items consistently will keep it from being possible for a glut of the best items from building as 'the best' can be a constantly moving target.</blue> [http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=27807930581&sid=3000&pageNo=2] Some very high level (above level 85) Diablo 3 [[item]]s were going to be designated as BoE to keep the [[end game]] economy from stagnating. The [[D3 Team|Diablo 3 team]] has said that BoE might apply could have applied to ''accounts'' ([[BoA]]), rather than to [[character]]s, thus allowing players to exchange such items between their own characters on the same account.