From Blizzard’s recent announcement:

When we initially designed and implemented the auction houses, the driving goal was to provide a convenient and secure system for trades. But as we’ve mentioned on different occasions, it became increasingly clear that despite the benefits of the AH system and the fact that many players around the world use it, it ultimately undermines Diablo’s core game play: kill monsters to get cool loot. With that in mind, we want to let everyone know that we’ve decided to remove the gold and real-money auction house system from Diablo III.

Better late than never I guess? Killing monsters and getting cool loot to use, what a novel concept. I think, the feeling that the entire game (loot system especially) revolved around forcing you to use the AH in order to be viable in the higher difficulties killed Diablo 3 for me. Very interested in seeing how Blizzard plans on remedying the drop system in Loot 2.0, in which I assume will be a pre-patch for the expansion.