PC players are still raw (or should be) about forced online DRM when we have seen it obviously isn't necessary (the console versions).
Even if they're raw, what does it amount to? People that were raw from D3 1.0 still bought RoS. So the loss of good faith didn't translate into anything negative monetarily - this was actually the point of my post. And a lot of that faith was restored anyway, because some people thought Blizzard just couldn't do a Diablo game anymore - RoS shows that actually, they can, they just weren't.
Where does Diablo 3 go from here?
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/16410220920
Mainly:
A new currency called "Platinum" Timed experience boosts
They're apparently going to sell cosmetics through that "Platinum" as well (obtained with real money). I'm sure this will eventually come to the NA servers.
Blizzard monetized all their other games without destroying them in the short term
Starcraft 2 is part of the new-wave Blizzard. They aren't really destroying anything, they're just putting more limitations on their games at launch so they can squeeze more out of each game in the long run. So everything is maybe half of what launch Blizzard games used to be - this is just the shitty nature of businesses. When they get bigger, they try to get bigger, and then they try to get even bigger. Eventually you have so much market saturation from what you're providing the only way to go bigger is to give the market you're consistently saturating less the next time, so they have to give you more to get the same thing they used to.
In China they're doing microtransactions in D3, but what about in the US? How can they possibly re-brand Diablo 3 and re-monetize it now?
Oh, you already knew about this. Probably bring it to US eventually, as said previously - just have to ease people into the idea of it. Letting them know it's available and they don't have it is part of that - there are already some people that have said they'd like timed XP boosts in US, ala Stimpacks on Hearthstone. Give it time, you'll see.
What do you think about that rumor?
Like you, it just makes sense. Even if it's bad for the game, people go where the money is.