Yeah, but didn't Blizzard say in their forums that Diablo 3 would work the same way as StarCraft 2 in offline/online mode?
I don't go to their forums.
Starcraft still keeps your saves locally, I believe. Maybe Diablo 3 will keep a local save (with quest data and such) and the player profile (stats and inventory) online, but I don't know.
Regardless, the game is sorta losing its appeal for me. I certainly am not going to keep playing it until getting some sort of super-duper rare stuff. Even more so if the really interesting stuff is going to only drop in Inferno difficulty (In inferno the mininum monster level will be 61, while the player max will be 60).
And I'm not going to waste real world income in auctions for said items. Especially if the prices soar to the hundreds.