D3's new SCROLL OF RESURRECTION

[Pappy13]

^^The problem is that some of the complaints are completely baseless. For example:

"If you’re changing the [price] of gold from 0.25 per 100,000 to .25 per 1,000,000 I would like to cancel my gold auctions before you do that. You’re completely shifting the market in less than a day, and those of us that have auctions listed that will be affected by this change cannot cancel them until after the patch hits, which is potentially too late".

Too late for what? He would have a point if the reverse were happening, that the gold rate was going UP from .25$ per 100K to say .25$ per 10K. That would mean that his auction would be priced way too low and he'd be in danger of losing gold on the deal when the change occurs, but when the price of gold is going down, all this means is that his auction is going to expire on it's own because no one in their right mind is going to purchase the gold at that rate when they can get it cheaper after the change. He's not being harmed in any way. He can just turn right around after the auction ends and put the gold back on the auction house for the new exchange rate and he's lost nothing in the process. Instead he'll complain to Blizzard that he's being harmed when he's not.

Also note that the author points out that regardless of whether or not it's real or virtual, those that are effected often believe that there's something sinister at work.

'If historical cases of hyperinflation - real, and now virtual - have one thing in common, it is the instinct among its victims to blame the symptoms rather than the disease. The Austrian economist Hans Sennholz noted that during the German hyperinflation, "intrigue and artifice" were believed to be at work. Similarly, a handful of Diablo 3 players, frustrated about the decimation of their purchasing power, expressed increasing suspicion of manipulation and conspiracy theories".

The reason the prices on the AH are high is because there is a HUGE surplus of gold in the game. How is that a problem? You could put more money sinks in the game and the prices on the AH would come down, but then people would have less money to spend, so what difference would it make? High prices on the AH are only an issue if no one has enough gold to purchase them. That simply isn't the case. The truth of it is that many people don't like to have to work for it, they simply want everything handed to them on a silver platter and complain about those that have put in the work (or the money) to be able to afford to splurge.

It's interesting to note Spider that you are complaining about the economy when one of the things that you (and countless others) complained about early on was the high cost of repairs. Blizzard lowered that which in turn allowed players to have more surplus gold and therefore spend more on the AH which in turn raised the prices. Now that Blizzard has done what everyone wanted them to do many are complaining about the result.

Even more interesting is that contrary to your assertion that the economy in D3 is in dire straights, the author's last comments seem to indicate that the virtual economy in D3 is no different than any other economy.

"By all accounts Diablo 3 is a great game; one hopes that with this episode passed, it will reacquire its former glory. But while decision-makers at online gaming firms can and should be forgiven for not anticipating the perilous and unpredictable torsions of rapidly expanding money supplies, the events of the last week provide a stark reminder of the power and inescapability of the laws of economics."

[Lee]

^^The problem is that some of the complaints are completely baseless. For example:

"If you’re changing the [price] of gold from 0.25 per 100,000 to .25 per 1,000,000 I would like to cancel my gold auctions before you do that. You’re completely shifting the market in less than a day, and those of us that have auctions listed that will be affected by this change cannot cancel them until after the patch hits, which is potentially too late".

Too late for what? He would have a point if the reverse were happening, that the gold rate was going UP from .25$ per 100K to say .25$ per 10K. That would mean that his auction would be priced way too low and he'd be in danger of losing gold on the deal when the change occurs, but when the price of gold is going down, all this means is that his auction is going to expire on it's own because no one in their right mind is going to purchase the gold at that rate when they can get it cheaper after the change. He's not being harmed in any way. He can just turn right around after the auction ends and put the gold back on the auction house for the new exchange rate and he's lost nothing in the process. Instead he'll complain to Blizzard that he's being harmed when he's not."[/i]

I believe he is referring to people selling items for gold.  When you are selling boots for 1,000,000 gold and suddenly those same boots are now worth 10,000,000 gold, he just lost out on recapturing the hyper-inflation of the gold.  I guess you cannot change the price of your items mid-way through your auction or cancel the auction altogether?


I suppose the point of the article is that the developers obviously haven't found the proper balance in the game, and as a result, its really not as fun for those who rely on the auction houses to progress or just like "playing the market"...

[Pappy13]

I believe he is referring to people selling items for gold.  When you are selling boots for 1,000,000 gold and suddenly those same boots are now worth 10,000,000 gold, he just lost out on recapturing the hyper-inflation of the gold.

Except that he specifically mentions "gold auction" and this was the preceding paragraph...

"The RMAH had minimum and maximum dollar amounts for in-game gold transactions: $0.25 minimum, $250 maximum. Market participants were also limited to dealing in increments of a certain size, called a “stack.” The “stack” was initially set to 100K gold. But as gold prices fell owing to rapidly building supply, the stack size was changed in August 2012 to 1 million. This practice, known as redenomination, is a fairly standard (if cosmetic) method of addressing inflation, but was viewed by some players as tacit devaluation."

So if he WAS talking about selling an item, the author of the piece misunderstood what he was referring to as well when he quoted him. Actually I think it's pretty clear the person the author was quoting was talking about not being able to cancel his gold auction from the RMAH.

I guess you cannot change the price of your items mid-way through your auction or cancel the auction altogether?

Yes, you can as long as no one has bid on your item yet. He was talking about selling gold which you can only do on the RMAH and has different rules for when you can and can't cancel your auction compared to the gold AH. His complaint is baseless, but since people don't fully comprehend the game dynamics, they complain. This is actually what the author was talking about when he said "This practice, known as redenomination, is a fairly standard (if cosmetic) method of addressing inflation, but was viewed by some players as tacit devaluation." The author is actually agreeing with me here that some people just don't understand the economics behind it.

D3 Auction House explained

I suppose the point of the article is that the developers obviously haven't found the proper balance in the game, and as a result, its really not as fun for those who rely on the auction houses to progress or just like "playing the market"...

Actually I think the main point of the article is that developers really CAN'T balance the economy. A virtual economy has the same problems that a real life economy has in that it is effected by those who participate in it. Developers shouldn't try to artifically manipulate the economy, the players will determine what the economy is. All the developers should do is make sure the players aren't able to "artificially" manipulate the economy which is what happened when the bug was introduced. Blizzard did their best to control that problem. It's unfortunate it happened, but it's NOT the reason the economy is what it is. That's just how economies work. It's all supply and demand. There's a huge surplus of gold in the system which causes the price of items to inflate over time, but it's not really an issue because there is a constant influx of new gold, all you have to do is go out and farm for it. If you don't want to farm for gold, don't. You CAN completely ignore the AH if you want to. But there are people who ENJOY playing the AH. Why prevent those people from something they like just because some don't? Blizzard could put more money sinks into the game that would reduce the surplus of gold and prices on the AH would come down, but that would only be because players had less money to spend. What would that change? How would that "fix" the economy? It wouldn't, because the economy isn't broken. All that would do would piss off those people who DON'T play the AH. Why screw over those people?

There are literally millions of items on the AH for less than 5K gold which takes about 5 minutes of in game playing to make. Now, those items are NOT the best of the best, but they are by no means crap. I purchased weapon upgrades for 2 of my paragon level 10+ toons last night for around 3K each. How exactly is the economy in shambles? The problem is that people at Paragon level 50 are looking for upgrades to their already super elite gear and can't find anything for under 100 million. Guess what, THAT'S HOW IT SHOULD BE!!! If you want that godly god-hammer of godliness, then by god you should pay through the nose for it!!! If you want something a little less godly, it's there, you may have to look a little harder or a little longer for it, but it's there and it's priced appropriately. People have 10's of millions of gold to spend, they just don't like spending it. How is that any different from ANY economy?

The kicker is that a lot of the people doing the complaining are the ones that don't play the game and haven't played for months. But they know better than the millions of people who are playing.

[Spider-Dan]

I'd say the "kicker" is that the director of the freaking game says "Yeah, the AH pretty much ruined Diablo 3, my bad" and you still have apologists trying to say that he's wrong and it's fine.

Diablo is not other games; the entire point of the game revolves around item collecting through random drops.  The AH basically replaces the "thrill" of random drops with money grinding (or officially sanctioned RMTing).

When the director of the game tells you that the AH was a bad idea, I'm not sure what else you are looking for.  These are direct quotes:

"The result is both auction houses damage item rewards. I know a lot of people like to pick on the real-money auction house but the truth is the gold one has much higher volume and in the long run we feel actually does more damage than the real money one does.  They both really hurt the game."

"It's a real tough question for us. It's not as easy as just turning it off. I think we would turn it off if we could."

[Pappy13]

I'd say the "kicker" is that the director of the freaking game says "Yeah, the AH pretty much ruined Diablo 3, my bad" and you still have apologists trying to say that he's wrong and it's fine.

I think a couple million active accounts a day pretty much speaks to the fact that he is wrong and it is fine or at least it didn't ruin the game for everyone. He's certainly welcome to his opinion as are you as am I.

It's also at least worth pointing out that he said that as he was leaving the team. Never heard any mention of that while he was on the team. Perhaps some sour grapes for being taken off the team or perhaps he just felt like it could have been implemented better and wished he would have done better? I do still find it incomprehensible that he also said that he didn't think the AH would be used that much. Wha?!!! Apparently he's never played a Blizzard game before? Maybe he was just the wrong guy for the job? There's a LOT of people that have voiced that opinion too. Perhaps the reason WHY he's longer the director of the game is because he failed to really understand how the dynamics of the AH changed the game from D2 and rather than blame himself, he blamed the AH itself?

I do think they made a mistake in the game by not having a "bind on equip" mechanism like they do in WoW. The hard core AH is a lot more stable partially because a lot of items get constantly removed from the game through deaths. I believe that if they would institute a game wide "bind on equip" policy, the AH would be a better place, but I don't think it's broken as it is, just not as good as maybe it could be. The fact of the matter is that even if there WEREN'T an AH within the game there would still be trading of items. It happened in D1. It happened in D2. All D3 did was make it easier, but a lot of folks were merrily oblivious to the fact that it was happening, now that it's part of the game it's a lot more visible to them and they're just not able to cope with it.

You have your opinion Spider, I have mine. I won't resort to calling you a hater though, I can respect your opinion while still disagreeing with it.

[bsmooth]

I know many players that the AH has ruined Diablo for them. If you are a casual player, farmers have ruined it by charging insane amounts for items, that the average player will be hard pressed to make.
The prices were one of the things that drove me away finally. When I hit the difficult levels and was looking to upgrade, I could not afford anything.

[Spider-Dan]

In a nutshell, the problem is:

1) the game is balanced for the existence of an AH (i.e. gear good enough to complete the game with drops much less frequency than in AH-less Diablos)
2) Fulltime gold farmers (read: RMT) inject vast quantities of gold into the economy 24/7, which is purchased en masse in the real money AH
3) Prices on the gold AH inflate crazily
4) Casual players cannot afford to buy good gear in the gold AH, so they are forced to choose between grinding endlessly with subpar gear in the hopes of getting a decent drop to sell for gold, or simply knuckling under and buying gold on the real money AH
5) If the latter, goto 3

In the early life of this game, you could at least opt out of the unreliability of hoping for a great drop by doing gold runs, where you can calculate x gold/hr and have a set gold target.  But inflation has made gold runs useless; you'd have to gold grind for many hours to get $0.25 USD worth of gold.

[Pappy13]

1) the game is balanced for the existence of an AH (i.e. gear good enough to complete the game with drops much less frequently than in AH-less Diablos)

This was true at release, but much has been done since then to improve this aspect of the game. Monster Power, Paragon levels, Improved Legendaries, Improved drop rates, Mob density increases have all contributed to making this much less of an issue today then it was at release.

2) Fulltime gold farmers (read: RMT) inject vast quantities of gold into the economy 24/7, which is purchased en masse in the real money AH

This is true.

3) Prices on the gold AH inflate crazily

This is true, but the reason is because players have crazy amounts of gold, therefore this in itself is not a problem. The problem is in the points below.

4) Casual players cannot afford to buy good gear in the gold AH, so they are forced to choose between grinding endlessly with subpar gear in the hopes of getting a decent drop to sell for gold, or simply knuckling under and buying gold on the real money AH

This is not an issue for casual players, this is true for players who are more than just casual players. You can spend modest amounts of gold (read under 100K) and get REALLY good gear. Not elite gear but REALLY good gear. That's more than enough for casual players. Casual players have no business desiring items on the AH that cost millions of gold, simply set your sights lower OR spend some money on the RMAH. This is in fact the reason for the RMAH, so that casuals have a way of obtaining elite gear.

5) If the latter, goto 3

If you are fundamentally opposed to spending money on the RMAH, you will need to set your expectations appropriately. Some people are willing to spend a couple dollars to get millions of gold to spend on the AH, if you are not one of them then you are either going to have to be willing to work hard to acquire that kind of gold or lower your expectations on the kind of gear you will be able to afford, but the choice is yours. I understand that some people are fundamentally opposed to this type of system, but it's always been there even if you didn't know about it. In D2 you could go out and purchase items for real money. I knew people that did this. The only thing that has changed with D3 is that Blizzard put in a system so that you wouldn't have to go outside the game to do it. By putting it in the game all Blizzard did was make it easy to use.

In the early life of this game, you could at least opt out of the unreliability of hoping for a great drop by doing gold runs, where you can calculate x gold/hr and have a set gold target. But inflation has made gold runs useless; you'd have to gold grind for many hours to get $0.25 USD worth of gold.

The game has changed. Monster Power, Paragon levels, increased drop rates, improved legendaries, mob density etc have all changed to make this much less of an issue. I won't say that farming isn't required at all, but it's not unreasonable. Many people do it. Running at MP1 at Paragon level 10 with 5 NV stacks I have around 200% gold and magic find with only average gear. With a little work you can easily get that to 300%. That's 4 times that amount of gold and item drops that a person with zero gold and magic find will have and that's even before you consider the increased drop rates and the increased monster densities. How do you think the farmers make all that gold to be passed out in the RMAH anyway?

I have never purchased gold in D3 because I have never felt the need. Although I play a good deal, I have a casual mindset. I have played the game all the way through and killed Diablo on Inferno difficulty with all 5 classes. I'm progressing through the Paragon levels with all 5 classes at Paragon level 10 or above. I can comfortably play Inferno difficulty on monster power 1. I have attempted up to about MP3, but at that point the game slows to a crawl for me and isn't any fun, so I typically stay at MP1 where I can move through the acts at a fairly quick pace. I have made it to Nightmare Act II with all 5 classes on hard core mode. I have never had more than 2 million gold. I have purchased dozens and dozens of upgrades on the AH for 5K or less and continue to do that even today. I don't believe I have ever spent more than about 100K on the AH and that's only been a time or 2 when I just wanted to splurge a bit a get a really nice upgrade for myself.

Yes, I realize that there are people out there that are running through the content at MP10 faster than I can at MP1 and are getting dozens of legendaries drop an hour, I simply don't care. It's not what drives me to play. If you have to be one of those people to enjoy the game, then yes you are going to have to do something to do that as well. Either spend inordinate amounts of time farming, drop your principles and put some money on the RMAH (a couple dollars is enough) or simply lower your e-peen rating a few points, the choice is yours. If you won't do any of these things, then I don't think the problem is with the game as much as personal taste.

[Spider-Dan]

The game has changed. Monster Power, Paragon levels, increased drop rates, improved legendaries, mob density etc have all changed to make this much less of an issue. I won't say that farming isn't required at all, but it's not unreasonable. Many people do it. Running at MP1 at Paragon level 10 with 5 NV stacks I have around 200% gold and magic find with only average gear. With a little work you can easily get that to 300%.

Great.  How much do you make in actual gold per hour when you are gold farming?

Back when I was playing, as I recall, I was getting 300k/hr (in gold find gear) doing Act 3 Hell gold runs.  Now, maybe gold drops have been increased (or maybe the opposite); I can't say.  So what do you actually make in gold per hour when you are gold farming?

How do you think the farmers make all that gold to be passed out in the RMAH anyway?

In case this was a real question, the answer is that they have people playing the game 24/7 doing nothing but grinding gold.  Multiply that by a year and that's a sizable chunk of cash.

[Pappy13]

Great.  How much do you make in actual gold per hour when you are gold farming?

Back when I was playing, as I recall, I was getting 300k/hr (in gold find gear) doing Act 3 Hell gold runs. Now, maybe gold drops have been increased (or maybe the opposite); I can't say. So what do you actually make in gold per hour when you are gold farming?

I don't really keep track of what the numbers are, I just know that it's much more than I used to get say 6 months ago before all these changes went in. Also, I don't gold farm per se, I'm just playing through the acts looking for gear upgrades. Sometimes that comes in the form of drops, sometimes it comes in the form of itesm from the AH from the gold I have earned. I can do some tracking but I'm not sure that will tell us much without having a baseline from me from 6 months ago. I can tell you that I don't have "magic find" or "gold find" gear. I have very little magic or gold find on my gear and like I said, once I get 5 stacks of NV, my magic and gold find are pretty good without gold and magic find gear. Let me check how much I have on my actual gear and I'll tell you how much MF and GF I have on my toons and what it is in game with 5 NV stacks.

As a side note, Blizzard gave everyone a gold and magic find buff for about a week for the 1 year anniversary. Perhaps I should have mentioned that to all of you? I don't think it was a big increase, but every little bit helps. I believe that the 300% GF and MF barriers that were once in the game have been removed or lowered as well. I think you can get quite a bit higher than 300% gold and magic find now, but again I don't really pay much attention to it. You might be much more interested then I am.

Edit: I went back to the patch notes and the 300% GF and MF max only pertains to your actual gear. Any bonuses to your GF and MF from Paragon levels, MP, NV stacks, Shrines, etc can take you over that 300% max. NV gives you an extra 15% per stack for a total bonus of 75%. Paragon levels give you an extra 3% per level. I'm not sure what you get for MP increases or shrines. They have also added a 10% bonus to GF and MF for each additional person in the game up to a max of 30% and GF and MF are no longer averaged across all of the toons in the game, if you have 300% MF and GF on your gear, you will get all of that bonus. You can also get MF and GF increases from your followers, but again I'm not really sure how much. I have no idea what these Paragon 100 players get for MF and GF in game.

In case this was a real question, the answer is that they have people playing the game 24/7 doing nothing but grinding gold. Multiply that by a year and that's a sizable chunk of cash.

I'm not sure that gold farming in D3 is a business the way that gold farming in WoW is. It might be, but I wouldn't necessarily assume it. 25 cents for 10 million gold is a pretty low margin to make a business out of it especially when Blizzard takes 15% off the top. I would REALLY love to see just how much gross income Blizzard gets from the RMAH. Now THAT would be interesting.

[Pappy13]

Some food for thought:

My profile

Using Selene (Paragon level 12) as an example:

20% magic find on her gear.
Paragon level 12 adds an additional 36% to MF.
Selenes MF with no NV stacks in a single player game is 81% on MP1, so it looks like each MP give you 25% MF boost.
NV stacks add 15% each, so with 5 NV stacks shes at 156%.
In a 4 player game it would have been 186%.

At MP10, her MF would go up to 306% with 0 stacks and would go up to 381% with 5 NV stacks (Assuming I could actually get 5 NV stacks at MP10 which I couldn't). 4 player game and it'd be over 400%.

With 300% MF gear on I could have hit 700% MF in a 4 player game on MP10. GF works essentially the same way. Add some to your follower to get even higher. Paragon level 100 should have no trouble hitting 800 to 900% MF and GF in game. They wouldn't really even need much MF or GF gear for it.

By the way I found the Danetta's revenge in game and I purchased the Danetta's Spite for 50K back in November. It was one of my few splurges so that I would have a matching set. Everything else on the character was found in game. I just looked on the AH and found 4 better Spites on the AH for 25K buyout, so at least that item has gone down in price from 6 months ago. This actually makes sense if you think about it because while there's more gold in the game then ever before, there are also more items in the game then ever before, therefore my Spite which was probably a little nicer 6 months ago has gone down in value as better and better ones have been found. I probably couldn't sell it for more than 5K now. At first glance that would seem to suck, but actually it means that I could purchase an upgrade now for less than I paid for the original. That's not a hyper inflated economy in my book, that's not even an inflated economy.

For grins I went into Act III hell on MP5 and made a little over 25K in about 8 minutes. That was with 0 NV stacks when I started, so after 5 NV stacks that rate would have picked up a bit, so 300K in an hour would have probably been doable, but that's without any GF gear and I have no idea what I would have gotten 6 months ago. I couldn't have played on MP5 and I was going through VERY easily. I could have probably kicked up the MP a level or 2 and been more efficient since I was killing stuff too quickly. Also please note that this would NOT be the best way to make gold now. You would be far better off going into Inferno act I and playing at MP1 or maybe 2 because although your GF and MF would be lower, the mob density and drop rates would be MUCH better. They have changed the mob density in acts 1 and 2 to be on par with act 3 and the mob density increases for each level of MP when playing in Inferno difficulty.

Edit: Upon further review, I might be wrong about going to Inferno and playing at MP1. I tried it and I only made a little over 21K in about the same time period. Part of the problem is with the increased mob density and mob difficulty, I only got 1 NV stack where I think I had 3 on Hell Act III in the same amount of time and it was also taking longer to kill just normal mobs. Perhaps moving down a bit and going up to MP 7 or 8 is the way to go. I'd have to play with it a bit to find the sweet spot. I don't do this type of thing, so I really don't know how to do it.

[Spider-Dan]

If you have a specific item you are looking to buy, MF doesn't do much; you're still playing the lottery, hoping that you will get an item that drops that's worth enough on the AH.  That is (or was) the upside of gold runs: you can have a solid idea of how much gold you will make per run and know that you will be able to afford the desired item after x number of runs.

At the time, my friends and I determined that Act 3 Hell had the best combination of straightforward runs (minimizing the impact of random of map generation on your ability to get to the bosses quickly), easily killed mobs, and iLVL item drop potential to make for a quality gold run while maintaining the possibility (a low one, but still) of a good item drop.

[Pappy13]

If you have a specific item you are looking to buy, MF doesn't do much; you're still playing the lottery, hoping that you will get an item that drops that's worth enough on the AH.  That is (or was) the upside of gold runs: you can have a solid idea of how much gold you will make per run and know that you will be able to afford the desired item after x number of runs.

All of the changes to MF have been made for GF as well, so in my example above for Selene, her GF was always 20 points behind her MF because she had 20 MF on her equipment and 0 GF. And while MF won't help you find the item you are looking for, it will help you find items that someone is looking for that you can put on the AH for gold and anything that doesn't sell on the AH can be vendorered or salvaged for items that you can put on the AH for gold. So even if all that extra MF doesn't help you find an upgrade, it will help build up your gold reserve so that you can go find an upgrade on the AH. The amount of rares that are dropping for players has become so great that it was taking players a long time just to ID them all and people were complaining, so in the last patch Blizzard added an "ID all" book, much like Deckard Cain used to do for you in D2 after you saved him. Now you can fill up your entire inventory with rares as you go, ID them, vendor them or salvage them all in a matter of seconds.

At the time, my friends and I determined that Act 3 Hell had the best combination of straightforward runs (minimizing the impact of random of map generation on your ability to get to the bosses quickly), easily killed mobs, and iLVL item drop potential to make for a quality gold run while maintaining the possibility (a low one, but still) of a good item drop.

And that may still be true, but in the last patch Blizzard changed the mob densities for acts I and II in an attempt to give players alternate routes of at least equal farming effeciencies. There's plenty of discussion on what is the best route to take now on the forums, but unfortunately I don't pay any attention because it doesn't interest me. On top of that, with each increase in MP, mob density increases and at MP10 it basically looks like D2's cow level so you don't need to go looking for mobs to kill, they are there in abundance.

Oh and one last thing. Monster power and NV stacks in addition to increasing your GF and MF also gives a boost to the XP you earn for killing mobs which increases the rate at which you can gain Paragon levels which in turn raises your GF and MF. NV is a straight 15% XP bonus per stack, MP bonus is listed below.

MP 1: 25%
MP 2: 50%
MP 3: 80%
MP 4: 120%
MP 5: 165%
MP 6: 215%
MP 7: 275%
MP 8: 340%
MP 9: 420%
MP 10: 510%

[Pappy13]

I realized when I was looking at my achievements, that one of them called "The one percent" tracks how much gold you have looted in game. I believe this is only the amount of gold that you have looted from mobs. For me that total is 18,496,789. The game also tracks how much time you have played for each class. I added it all up and it was just under 730 hours of time played for me. Doing the math, that's 25.3K gold an hour that I have looted from mobs. Keep in mind that I have leveled all 5 classes to Paragon level 10-12 in normal and all 5 classes to 40-45 in hardcore, so the vast majority of my time has not been spent at max level nor has it been spent farming, it's been just playing the game normally. Also remember this is just the gold picked up from mobs, it does not include the amount of gold that I have accumulated selling items on the AH or vendoring them which is quite substantial in itself.

Now I have spent a good bit of gold on things like repairs and crafting too, but lets say that I have made enough gold vendoring items and selling them on the AH to offset the amount of gold that I've spent on repairing items and crafting just for the purposes of this discussion. That would leave that full 25K gold an hour from mobs to spend on the AH purchasing upgrades which is more than enough for making reasonable purchases all the way up through max level. If you spend a little time farming and can farm around 300K gold an hour like Spider said (I'm certain that it would be possible for him to get much higher than that now) then even items costing millions of gold are not out of reach for the casual player.

Yes, items costing billions of gold on the AH are out of reach for the casual player, but I can't stress this enough, the casual player does not need to be spending billions of gold to simply play the game through to the end. I've done it with all 5 classes without ever spending anywhere close to even a million in gold in TOTAL on the AH. Someone spending billions of gold on the AH is doing it so they can reduce the game to farming for 10 legendary drops an hour at MP10. That person is probably one of the ones selling gold on the RMAH and is probably pulling in more cash now doing it then what they dropped on the RMAH to get to that point. Are you really envious of this person? I'm not.