A disservice?

[Arnulf]

Simply put, IMO, the AH is a choice you can make. You can use it, or not. Any consequences to your gameplay or satisfaction are then solely yours. Just like what difficulty you play in or how fast you get there, or whether you're an altoholic or not.

Taking a feature away because you can't keep yourself from using it doesn't make sense. That's your issue, not the game's.

(Not aimed at anyone in particular here.)

My viewpoint of this, which coincindentally aligns a bit with Roland's, is that you can either

a) farm for that special item that will make you progress, or

b) farm the gold which allows you to buy that item on the softcore auction house.

Either way it is a time sink. Me, I'm preferring option B, because it's more "controlled" for lack of a better word. I like the auction interface. It's like a restricted version of the search feature on wowhead.com.

I'm taking it slow at the moment. Got a female wizard (witch?, sorceress?) in Act 1 nightmare right now past the sunken temple. The prices for items are still manageable for me. Although I'll probably have to ditch the gold find gear now and replace it with real damage and vitality gear.

I wonder what will happen to the softcore AH when the real money auction house opens with the possibility to buy gold. I guess the prices will rise considerably. Until then I plan to have fun and don't worry too much over it.

-Arnulf