Seriously, who gives a rat's arse about some random rat's tail that you find vaguely implied as treasure? I know the basic thinking is every little bit helps, but does it really?

You'll quickly notice that the vast majority of your cash comes from completing missions, the treasure hauls of main bosses and the big magic items you find ... you know the ones with values with lots of 0s on the end, and not the odd assortments of arrows that come in ones and twos. I wonder how much leveling power you really lose not mucking around with every piece of junk that washes up on your looting shore. I wonder how much time you save not rearranging your bag at every juncture and staring long and hard at every pelt, candle and flower pot you come across. It's not just a quality of life thing - it's a quality of loot thing, surely you could use all that accounting and packing time better to find something that's actually worth hauling back to town.

I also noticed how much more fun it was not casting spells every three seconds to get up my Illusion skill or jumping everywhere to get more points of athletics. Do I really need to be a cross between Criss Angel and Cathy Freeman to save the Shivering Isles?

You know what? I found that I didn't. The game moved along nicely as it was. I think it's put me in good stead for STALKER. I've heard a bunch of complains about limited inventory in that one. Well, it's just a design choice. You're not meant to strip mine every character you come across; you just take what you need and move on. If you want seven rifles to hock you can try it, but you're being greedy and limiting your life expectancy. Ever tried to run with that much hardware clicking and clacking around? No, me either. I'd get to about my second rifle and say shag it. Of course, some games are still balanced around making every character you run one part happy hocker and two parts pack rat. Man, after about level 20 you just don't mess around in WoW, unless you want to be thumbing rides for the next 40 levels ... even knowing this I think I'm a changed gamer.

Life's just too short to fixate on the random crap that sits the bottom of the monster's purse. If I don't want to know what's in the bottom of my girlfriend's bag (or my glovebox, or attic), I certainly don't want to know what the zombie queen has been meaning to get rid of for months and has rattling around with her scrunched up tissues...