[Archon_Wing]

Well, it would be absurd to see the game as any form of an income but it's still nice to get your money back as a bonus.

That being said, the AH isn't the culprit (people would trade with one another anyways, and use third party websites-- they still do), it's the drop rates being focused around the AH that is the problem. If the AH didn't exist but we still had the boring itemization and poor drop rates, the game would be complete trash as we had when act 1 inferno could only drop 61s and act 2 could only drop 62s. Taking on pre-patch act 2 with ilvl 61 weapons and enrage timers = wiping one's ass with sandpaper. It wasn't impossible, but it took a lot of grinding and an AH that was tainted by people exploiting into act 3 to get vendor shiz.

1.03 addressed it partially, but fucked up in other areas making it an even worse piece of trash. (lol repair costs)

As of 1.04 you actually can find your own items to beat inferno; still takes a long time but it's not as ridiclous as the previous situation I described before, so it's getting better now. We went from 62s only dropping in act 2+ to 62s being able to appear as early as Act 3 of hell. In addition 1.04 61 and 62 weapons are actually usable now, so that makes the situation entirely reasonable.