Walter said:
Well as I understand it, the auction house will be removed and game rebalanced in a patch that comes out just prior to Reaper of Souls--which is applicable for anyone who has D3. Reaper of Souls is just new content for $40.
And soylent green is just new food content made from people. =)
Kidding about the arguable outrageousness of this aside, they've been doing their "rebalancing" act to no avail since day one and I don't really care what they do with the auction house. To be honest, I'm actually more annoyed by its removal than excited for what they have in store (the Diablo you know, after all). It was an optional feature, and the real problem was and is the drops.
In any case, $40, two thirds of the original game's initial asking price, seems to me an obscenely steep amount for a quarter of the content, and for relatively little at that: an extra act of redundant environments and monsters, one new boring class, and a lousy 10 extra levels along with some new item mechanics that may or may not be better. I was already unimpressed by what was being promised, and it feels bad enough to continue playing this game without being made to feel like I'm getting swindled in the process. I'd like to think that price point represents Blizzard's confidence in the quality and quantity of new content, but it feels more like exactly how much they think they can get away with.
Maybe this is the norm though and I'm just out of line with it. Maybe Blizzard figured that smaller DLCs are already overpriced for even less content, and people pay it, so for something amounting to a quarter of new content and maybe a meaningful overhaul, why not double or triple the price. To the point of charging as much for the "special edition" DLC as the original game itself. It's not even so bad when you think about it, since for some games the total cost of the DLCs ends up being about as much or even more than the game itself (I'm looking at you, Mass Effect DLCs I never have and likely never will play).
For fun I googled the price to see the reaction (I knew it would be good =), and even Forbes has published an article essentially calling it a ripoff:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/12/20/diablo-3-reaper-of-souls-when-is-an-expansion-just-overpriced-dlc/
Also worth considering is Diablo III's competition: https://www.pathofexile.com/
Better and free.