Shiny Prizes

[MongoJerry]

You completely miss my point. The drop rates of higher quality items are systematically made lower to compel people into using the AH (primarily come Inferno time) - Blizz wants that 15% cut.

You say this with such confidence and assurance. Meanwhile, Blizzard employees themselves say that they playtested the game without the AH and have been surprised by how fast people have been gearing up using the AH. That is, players are far ahead of where they had originally projected them to be. Meanwhile, all Blizzard has done since the game's release is make top items easier and easier to find. You're right, though, that Blizzard does get that 15% cut from impatient people who don't want to farm items for themselves or rely on the gold auction house for their items. Of course, what really happened is that they've cut out the 3rd parties who would have been happy to have provided such services to these impatient people anyway -- and they've done it by providing much more reliability and much reduced chance of fraud and account scamming. That's a pretty good business move of theirs.