I have not even started using C#6, which introduces the Null-Conditional operator. I expect this to already cleanup a lot of that verbose null-checking code, and avoid null reference exceptions simply because checking for null gets so much easier.

To me, as a C# dev, this proposed change seems rather quick (let C#6 get some use first) and it also seems not consistent with nullable value types: with a reference type you'll get a compiler warning where the same error on a value type will give an error.