Blizzard gain a flash of insight?

[Archon_Wing]

I agree that many are buying great stuff, and not understanding that doing so precludes getting upgrades out in the world as easily. That's the fault of the player, not the AH.

Yes and no. To say it is the fault of the player is to imply that they know better and do it anyway. I feel that there is a large segment of the players that could not see that. With all the talk going in and once it was released, I can easily see the mindset that the AH is central to the game and that it is meant to be the main upgrade path. I believe that they unknowingly cheated themselves out of fun without seeing that it was there to be had. In real life, there would have been time to show people a better way to continue on. With the game, it is a bell that can't be un-rung, the damage has been done.

So, weighing in on AH yes or no, I come down on no, it shouldn't have been there. I believe there would have been less criticism of the game's "lack of end game" (although I'm sure many would have found some other reason to whine) and more folks would have the hope for longevity of the game that I do.

Again, this old gamer's opinion. YMMV.

I did play through the game to inferno with little AH interference. I didn't bother with it at all til the end of nightmare and even at that point didn't buy more than incremental upgrades til inferno. I also wasted all my gold on blacksmithing to become self-sufficient and realized it was a horrendous waste of time and I was still wearing jewelry from normal, because the drops later on were complete garbage.

I feel the problem is that there aren't 4 difficulties. There's actually only two-- nightmare and hell. Normal is just to waste your time at the beginning, and inferno is just to waste your time at the end of the game.

The verdict? I'll use the AH from now on from the start as everything else was literally just wasting all my gold. Not to mention there's really nothing to look forward to. I tried starting a new character, but due to normal mode being normal mode, fell asleep somewhere along the way. The blacksmith needs to be a viable competitor. Make high level blacksmithing cost a fortune, but it should not cost low level characters so much gold just to make something they'll be using temporarily anyways.

The real solution is to play hardcore. Softcore, after 1.03, is trash at the moment. It's currently designed that you are horrifically punished for attempting to challenge yourself and forcing you to grind areas you massively overgear to progress. Hardcore's a challenge, though sadly the a large challenge comes from server instability so even that has its pitfalls.

But there is good news. The Blizzard post suggests that they finally admit they have no idea what the hell they're doing, and might be actually testing out the consequences of their next actions. Hope springs eternal, as they say.