On practical terms, I think it is quite possible that the way many people will use the rmah will be to both sell and buy, with relatively low net dollars invested (or earned). At least that is how I can imagine myself using it moving forward. If I get a godly item that I can’t use, I would sell it and then use the proceeds to buy gear (as opposed to cashing out). I do worry about the impact on the value of gold once they enable buying gold.

I’m speaking to the general unease with RMAH, and how they’re very legitimate feelings for anyone to have but once we get into the swing of things, and we live in the reality of the RMAH world we’ll find that those fear were really unfounded. I never took your post to be one of complaining how you’re progressing in the game, my comments are directed specifically at the fear that you can’t progress in the game without paying for it in the RMAH as many people I know have expressed, and how you hinted that you may find yourself in that position with your comment “I have a sinking feeling that if I want to improve my character to its maximum potential I am going to have to participate in a system that I don’t think I agree with.”

The point of my post is to allay the fears or trepidations that people have about the RMAH and even though you’re not in the position of “why do I have to AH myself to make any progress” you did express that that is where your concern lies with the RMAH when the time comes to that. Really no different that the fear and trepidation we feel with any changes that happen in wow, but after living with them the reality is a lot different than we thought it would be.

Hardly worthy of thinking I’m launching a focused attack on something you didn’t do

I have absolutely no clue where half of the commentary in your reply comes from – certainly not my post. Not once did I say anything in this post about the difficulty of Inferno, or not being able to progress in it without the AH. In fact, I wouldn’t even say I, personally, have hit a brick wall as I’ve continued to make steady progress through Act 3. Perhaps your are inflecting other commentary that you’ve read into your thoughts here, but I simply offered an off the cuff, gut reaction in a total of four paragraphs on my initial feelings on the RMAH. Hardly worthy of the scathing “stop bitching you’ve not finished the game and go play if that’s what you want to do/L2P” response you’ve posted here (also of note, not one time have I ever offered a complaint about how quickly/slowly I’m progressing through the game – in any of my posts).

Fears:
* RMAH will make it so I can’t progress without paying money

This is very much a non issue, we have people complaining they can’t finish the game less than a month from release without fishing for upgrades in the AH. Yes, inferno is hard, and yes its more brutal to certain classes/play styles but remember A, its not been fully tuned yet by the devs, they have long posts about changes they want to make B, Its less than a month since this game has been out, have you really capped out your skill level at playing the game? and C, AFAIK this difficulty level wasn’t even in previous diablo games, its supposed to staggeringly difficult.

If you like playing the game and not the AH, then play the game, if you’ve hit the inferno brick wall, then take the time to get better at your class, or farm for better upgrades yourself, or mess with another build, or start playing a different class. Saying that you can only get better by acquiring that top echelon of gear that has perfect stats is the same old wow raider excuse of “its my gear”, especially since you’ve not been playing this game very long.

Also remember that since this game has no concept of soul bound, items are forever (unless they’re rotting in an un-played account). As time goes on there will be more and more “perfect” stat gear out there, continually driving the price down.

* RMAH will kill the gold auction house

This may be a real possibility, gold could lose it value completely as it has in many other games that don’t provide enough of a gold sink. It will be interesting to see what steps blizzard takes to maintain the gold economy if this happens. But if it does happen, you can still participate in the RMAH without spending any money. Put your items up for sale in there, and earn blizz bucks that you can then use to purchase other items, really no different than the gold AH, other than you no longer have vendor-ing and chests as income for the AH.

The bottom line is that if you’re complaining that the AH is the only way for you to make progress in inferno at this point in the game’s lifecycle, I really think that you’re conjuring a tempest in a teacup.

At one time I looked at 500,000 items like they were Bentleys. Now those aren’t even viable upgrades for me.

/mini-blog-off