You might be correct, I don't know much about SC2 community. I've just read that opion from the professional SC2 gamer and I think he has some valid points.

Are you really incapable of handling a single decision? "I don't want to worry about offline characters, what do I do ... Oh, create an online character!" That just requires such a humongous ammount of intelligence and decisionmaking to do. Come on, you're just purely fanboyish here.

If it means anything, Blizzard signed an agreement with KeSPA. The last Brood War tournament ended this fall. Starting with the next tournament, KeSPA will be using SC2 as their official game. (KeSPA's probably the biggest eSports organization in South Korea)
Heh, it may look stupid and childish when you read it, but... Seriously, I do not want to bother with configuring and managing stuff anymore. Screw that, just let me click a button and get in. Screw this game putting saves there, that game putting saves there. Just keep everything on my stupid account, and sync it with every system that I log in.

I was a very 'deeply' into this once, even making installers (complete with new icons, cracks, everything). To hell with that. :)

Sure, no problem. But given the development time, it wouldn't really Blizzard cost much to implement a 'local' feature and everyone would be happy. You could carry on with online-only characters and people who want to play offline would play locally, everybody wins. And don't tell me how hard it'd be to do, it really wouldn't.

I personally think Blizzard is doing this due to legal concerns with the real money AH. That is in several ways a legal time bomb waiting to go off. And the more control they keep on this, the better it will be once they need to defend against legal action. I can't really blame them, knowing what is expected of companies in liability cases.

a) they could just not allow for that in local bit (well... They'd have to not allow any AH in local bit, actually)
b) they could not do real money AH at all, it's pretty idiotic anyway.

FTFY

And on a). Looking at gamers in general, I think it is often a lot better just to limit their options than to deal with the problems it otherwise causes. (Also the reason I think they pulled D3 normal edition). There are always enough idiots around that complain anyway. Than why not go the way best for you anyway?

Profitable and idiotic aren't mutually exclusive, you know. Especially in a videogame with a competitive element.

And just no, whatever you say, always-on DRM is not a good thing. No excuse actually works. There would be idiots that would complain, sure. There are now way more legitimate customers with legitimate complaints. What's better of the two?

I would love to see the money Blizzard is making simply of the AH fees. Probably more than the game sales themselves. And, to be fair, either you ban this practice completely on eBay, or Blizz can have his could. They certainly deserve it more than eBay.

The entire thing with real money trading was much smaller phenomena when it was confined to eBay than it is now, when it's directly under Blizzard control. The base issue with players with money to spare being in advantage is not fixed by it, it's enhanced. For bigger profits. Yay.

Auction houses are improvement actually. People were trading the in game items anyway, so Blizzard is making money on it (Blizzard owns all the game content, items, your character, so why shouldn't they?), and it's way safer. The risk of being scammed is minimized.

It is an improvement. It may debalance the game or make it less fair to people who don't buy items for real money, but still.

Exactly. Therefore more people are going to do it. I very much doubt more than 1 or 2% of Diablo 2 playerbase was buying stuff on eBay, and they were doing it at a risk. That's good. That turns people away from bringing real-life economic situation into a videogame with competitive element. Now it's officially endorsed by Blizzard and far, far more people are going to do that. As far as I'm concerned, that's a very bad thing.

I mean, I see your argument a lot, and I just don't see it being a good argument. While it removes the problem of people trading on eBay, which is their own problem, it massively enhances the 'pay to win' issue.

We'll see. If it is as you say, Diablo 3 community should shrink pretty fast. But if most people don't care about the ladder and play only with friends, it won't matter.

Why would it shrink and why would it not shrinking make officially endorsed 'pay to win' a good thing in any way imaginable?

I thought real money AH items were excluded from the ranking stuff?