The AH wasn't really the problem for D3. The problem was the basic stat balance issues created huge lottery items.
At launch for a Monk basically there were a handful of god stats (attack speed, life on hit, dex, all resist, your specific resist, magic find), a handful of ok stats and a large number of garbage stats. Now even a good stat can be worthless because of the large value ranges.
Back of the envelop numbers: say god stats are a 10, ok stats are 4 and dump stats are 2's. Now the MEDIAN item is (roughly) 1% of one with an avg amount of ideal stats (ideal stats with all high end values might be 30 times better).
To me the itemization was far and away better in D2. A decade of MMO popularity may have changed player expectations as well. And yes, circling back to the linked article, the AH exposes the poor itemization in a way that D2 didn't have so even if D3 itemization is the same as D2 it needed to be better.
At launch for a Monk basically there were a handful of god stats (attack speed, life on hit, dex, all resist, your specific resist, magic find), a handful of ok stats and a large number of garbage stats. Now even a good stat can be worthless because of the large value ranges.
Back of the envelop numbers: say god stats are a 10, ok stats are 4 and dump stats are 2's. Now the MEDIAN item is (roughly) 1% of one with an avg amount of ideal stats (ideal stats with all high end values might be 30 times better).