orcishgamer: They actually raised some points that I had no considered that were really interesting. I'll let people here judge if they're worth discussing.
1. The playing for money instead of fun point really depends on the person in question. Seems like this already exists (gold farmers and people who level up other people's characters are a good example).
2. Yes, power creep might be a problem, as it is a problem in WoW right now. But I'm saying 'might', because the devs already published plans to work out better system for increasing item level, char level, and similar things. Starting with Mists of Pandaria, the general level of items in WoW will drop significantly, which should stabilize the economy for lower level players. This should make its way into D3, but we really cannot judge until we see how the economy takes shape.
3. It was officially confirmed at BlizzCon that the devs won't interfere with the game's economy, place items on sale and similar things, unless a problem comes up (like an exploit / bug or something similar). So we don't really need to worry about this. Meaning you won't have to pay to win.
Nice episode overall, basically, yea, I agree, this really seems to be a test whether player driven economy with real money would work in a game or not. They are also doing something similar with Starcraft 2. Coming with its first expansion, Heart of the Swarm, great quality mods will be purchasable in the build-in marketplace (called The Arcade). The latter is really great for indie modders and devs, that achieve great quality with their mods / games, in a way that they would be able to sell their mods / games (say, Peggle Starcraft edition, or Plants versus Zerglings, or something similar).
