People trade on dubious sites. Trades go wrong. Credit card details go... to the wrong places. Accounts get compromised and players have a bad game experience as a result. Blizzard tried to rectify it with the best interests at heart: to enable the trading that happens in a safe environment.
Balance of players use the AH because--as Blizzard admitted--the loot drop mechanism wasn't balanced (hence "Loot 2.0 in RoS).
Blizzard man-up and remove it.
Sleep well, night night, end of story.
agree, i actually agree with blizzard on the AH, at all stages.
in the begining, i agreed it was a good idea - people trade anyway, its better that its at a blizzard controlled place.
but... with the way it actually turned out, because now it was EVERYONE (pretty much, on gold at least) trading, and trading was legimate, it felt like it was part of the game - and something you were expected to do.
whereas in D2 i could say 'no, i don't have a weapon that good yet, i'm trying to get it in game rather than ruining my experience by getting stuff outside the game', now the AH was part of the game, and refusing to use it was just seen (by the people i was playing with, and by myself) as deliberately limiting myself for no reason.
so yeah, i agree that removing it is the way to go.
and super looking forwards to RoS - i need to give blizzard more money, as i've only bought 4 copies of D3 so far. ('free' copy for subscribing to a year of wow, which since i didnt play wow for the second half of that, ended up costing me money...., CE for me, regular for my brother, and now a copy for PS3 so i can play with the GF
)
