Stackable items? Less scam, more convenience.

If you have ever played World of Warcraft, I'm sure you already know the very popular "fake stack" auction house trick: you post a single item (or a smaller stack) for the price of a full stack.

Example: 1000 "Uber Arrows" usually sell for 4 gold pieces. You post 10 auctions for 4G each, then you add few stacks of 100 arrows for the same price. When a random buyer fast-clicks your auctions one by one, he/she will eventually buyout the 100 arrows stacks too. That means -for you- a net 10X gold income for each smaller stack.

This trick used to work pretty good with big stacks because the game interface could lead the buyer to believe that "100" was "1000" with the last "0" hidden (example: some 3rd party mods can change the font size and the number does not fit in the icon).

There is another typical scenario: sometimes you look for one item and everyone is posting full stacks, instead of single pieces. Example: you need 1 "Amazing Gem" that goes for 100 gold and you just find stacks of 20 (total: 2000 gold). Annoying, isn't it?

Diablo 3 Auction House will fix all of this by introducing what I would call a "smart stacking economy": you can buy entire stacks or parts of them based on what you need. So if you sell a stack of 20 items, someone could buy 5 only, effectively removing them from your auction (that would now become a 15 items stack).

This feature works for the buyer:

Rather than having to hunt through pages of listings yourself to find the best-priced stack, you can instead select the stackable item type you're looking for, type in the amount of the item you want, and then buy that amount for the lowest price currently available to the market. This may mean that you're buying from multiple sellers at many different price points, and the Auction House will manage all of those individual purchases for you automatically. (source)

and of course for the seller too:

Similarly, you can use the Auction House to quickly place your stackable items up for sale. Simply choose the amount you'd like to sell, type in the sale price for an individual item, and your auction is ready to go. Since the Auction House manages how others will purchase your items, there's no need to separate your items into smaller stacks or list them individually. (source)

All in all it's a very good "tool" for every buyer, because the risk to buy fake stacks is gone. And you can finally buy what you really need, instead of "buyouting a full stack" because you're in a hurry and needed 1 piece for your craft. Is it good for sellers too? Yes, because it simplifies the process of creating new auctions and opens more possibilities for those who just need one or two pieces (and would skip your full-stack auction).

Offtopic: when is Blizzard going to announce the official release date? There is much debate (based on other games and betas from Blizzard) and many "experts" focus on March as a good canddate.

You know what? I don't care at all. I've got a perfect placeholder: Skyrim.