| Blizzard Loves Neil Stephenson

I'm about 10% through REAMDE and after reading a lil' bit about Diable 3's real money auction house model, I am more than a little intrigued by the parallels between T'Rain and D3.  The fictitious T'Rain was build around a Chinese goldfarmer model and with the whole 'cash for virtual goods' angle of D3, it seems either a) someone at Blizzard read an early version of REAMDE, or b) this is a case of the same idea being though and developed independently of one another at the same time (see Deep Star 6 and Leviathan, or The Illusionist and Prestige).

I think jr0n is the only one to have read REAMDE, thoughts jr0n?

PS I have total buyers remorse for D3.  For some reason the thought of playing with my AT pals was enough to make me impulse buy D3, and then looking at screenshots I remember why I don't really like the series.  I hope the game is super awesome and we actually do play together (is that even possible?), otherwise I'm gonna be kicking myself in the dan over this buy.