Understanding of Pay-to-Win in D3

PVP was always going to be pay-to-win. That was obvious a year ago. If you're just arriving at that conclusion, you're very late. There was no question in anyone's mind before the game ever launched that with the auction houses available the game would be pay-to-win instead of play-to-win.

Then why is diablo 3 pay to win?

My understanding of “pay to win” is that PLAYER LOOT and PLAYER LOOT ONLY will go on the pay AH, therefore it will not unbalance the game because you can acquire the same loot without paying dollars. And it will balance UN. Think of it this way. gold will have a dollar value that dollar value will stay basically the same, it will be similar to buying items with gold where prices are basically set like, theoretically, ore is always 20 gold.

Not participating in purchasing with dollars will not affect your play: sure you may not progress as quickly as people who buy gear, but by farming gold, items, ect. They won’t be more powerful than you. I'm looking forward to making some money off it maybe! I won’t be buying d3 items with money because to me, part of Diablo's fun is farming items yourself

RMAH have nothing to do with the game being pay to win, at all. Diablo 2 RMAH was ebay then d2jsp and everyone was using it. The only way you can remove pay to win is by not letting players trade, like in WoW. Or by not making the same mistake blizzard did with diablo 3, by making the RNG so intense that an item have extremely low chances of being 5x better instead of making it like d2 that yes, you had a extremely low chance of identifying a perfect shako, but the only difference would be a few extra defense points.

It's pay to win in the sense that the option exists if you want to use it. For those who want to upgrade quicker and have Diablo III items for sale, it's not the only route to success, but it's certainly the fastest.