Loot -- Be Careful of What You Wish For

[RTM]

I don't see why they couldn't add some sort of crafting that incorporates white items. Say, start with a base white weapon, add your crafting mats, maybe some gems for set specific stats (ruby for +str, etc), and voila! One of the things I enjoyed about runewords in D2 was finding the perfect item to make the runeword- a particular weapon that had the best range or attack speed or base damage, for instance. I actually spent a lot of time browsing base weapon stats on the Arreat Summit. Now, the only weapon stats that seem to matter are attack speed and ilvl. And white items are thoroughly ignorable.

Runewords didn't come into play until D2:LOD, did they? It's probably something they're saving for an expansion.