I personally think people are ignoring the inevitable effect of expansions which will likely be very much akin to WoW expansion, increasing level cap, adding item stats and thus making current "world bests" sub-par/redundant/etc.. basically forcing a reset on the economy. Even if it's not as severe as a full reset, it will at the very least provide botting with an outlet for profit.
I think that was their intention up until recently when they started to understand its not going to impact the gold price very much at all, which is what the game is built around. New BIS items will create $ opportunity from selling items on the RMAH but it wont help the gold AH very much at all nor the legit player base (both of which should be a huge concern for blizzard).
Right now it's pretty much boiled down to high trifecta's (nat/pox/rares/ik glove etc), 6cc mempos, and some select few weapons (high end ef's , rares,) that are out of reach of casual gold users that want to play the game as what it is ... a game. Can you imagine what will happen if gold continues to devalue or even hold its current value and new uber items are introduced? Right now the demand is low even for the high end items but they are still $ only items. Add in new BIS items with EXTREME demand or even mid tier items with extreme demand and they will have a high % of the new stuff listed only on RMAH.
I dont know about other people, but if I were playing legit .... I would definitely not enjoy being forced to use $USD to buy gear. There's a few options I see possible and likely to happen:
1) Gold AH limit raised by 10x or around to let casual gold users compete with $USD. This will at least let them have a possibility of buying the items w/o spending $USD but will not fix the situation prices / gold are in atm. A casual player has almost 0 chance of acquiring any wealth even if they play 12+ hours a day. The people that are wealthy in the game legit are the 1's that got there long ago before economy was totally fuked.
2)Ladders... reset every 6-12 months for fresh start economy every time and also allows huge sweeping changes to be made w/o effecting peoples current characters. Much like D2 or poe, they should roll all char's at end of ladder into legacy or non-ladder and that economy itself will grow and take care of itself. The people who want a constant, no changes, permanent economy can stay there ... and the people who enjoy fresh economies with new content or major game changes / balancing can play in ladder. It's the best choice I see possible, and I think they also see this now ... finally.
3) xpac introduces a fresh start. maybe even a new currency ... platinum or something similar. they could also let it be xpac only vs vanilla only with 2 different economies and would allow them to make huge changes w/o effecting current characters. They could also continue this model with future xpacs and just roll all the previous into vanilla servers much like ladder. Also a good option imo.
Thats my current opinion on the matter... I had like a 14 page rant below all this that I had to delete because I got into D3 hate rant mode lol. I think they finally understand that the wow model will not work in D3 and need to go back to Diablo roots and use what has worked for over a decade in some way or fashion.
