A recent thread about salvaging reminded me of a feature from another game... In that game (Dungeon Siege), usually after battle, you could click on a mule party member (maybe a few) and hit the "z" key... The selected character(s) would then go running around in the immediate vicinity picking up everything on the ground (until inventory filled up).

Considering even junk items are going to have some value (salvage / sell for gold), how about a similar feature? Press a hot-key and your character hoovers up all items on the ground near him / her (until his / her inventory is full).

We don't like and don't want to encourage any type of item-hoovering. Killing monsters, seeing items pop out, and then picking them up is part of the game.

We don't mind auto-pickup for gold because there's never any reason you wouldn't pick it up, because it doesn't take up inventory space. Anything that takes up inventory space has some amount of choice attached to it, regardless if you think you'll salvage most things or not.

It's important to note that fewer items drop in Diablo III as compared to Diablo II, and the chances for rarer items to drop is less extreme. So you'll be picking up fewer items, and they'll generally be of higher quality as compared to the previous game.