I wanted to take a moment to maybe counter a few people talking about white items now being 'useless'
While they don't fill in a particular niche in itemization, they do help balance the loot tables.
If Blizzard said they want x items to drop, the lowest denominator cannot be a blue item; that would screw everything up, because then the weakest possible item would be too powerful.
they would then have to arrange the item system so the blue items are 'useless' so more powerful items are proportionately more rare.
as far as making them unsalvagable, well... I think the salvaging value is only useful now because the beta is all we see. What about at level 60? will you really pick up all those white items to inevitably get common scraps? after act one or two, the time you spend picking up white items won't be worth it. Not for gold, not for salvaged items, not for anything!
tl;dr: White items are needed as a lowest denominator, and I'm guessing that nobody would pick them up for salvaging after act one or two anyhow.
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While they don't fill in a particular niche in itemization, they do help balance the loot tables.
If Blizzard said they want x items to drop, the lowest denominator cannot be a blue item; that would screw everything up, because then the weakest possible item would be too powerful.
they would then have to arrange the item system so the blue items are 'useless' so more powerful items are proportionately more rare.
as far as making them unsalvagable, well... I think the salvaging value is only useful now because the beta is all we see. What about at level 60? will you really pick up all those white items to inevitably get common scraps? after act one or two, the time you spend picking up white items won't be worth it. Not for gold, not for salvaged items, not for anything!
tl;dr: White items are needed as a lowest denominator, and I'm guessing that nobody would pick them up for salvaging after act one or two anyhow.