This post from Blizzard Community Manager Bashiok hits the nail on the head with what we've been saying about loot. If you want the good stuff you have to trade or buy and sell.
Diablo has always been a random number generator. You walk into a dungeon and it's randomly generated into a configuration. You pick up a piece of loot and it's randomly generated with a set of stats. This is how it was in Diablo 1 and 2 and in 3 it's a much greater beast. We have far more variety in stats than we did in the original Diablo and so the chances of you getting what you need from a random loot drop is so rare that if you set up your character with only random loot drops, and you were then able to complete higher level dungeons, if I were you I'd go and buy a lotto ticket!
Trade forums in Battlenet were nuts in Diablo 2 but I got a lot of my gear back then by monitoring for things in the chat and jumping into games with people to trade. The Auction House just provides an easy way to do that now.This is what Bashiok had to say on the matter ...
