I agree Kill the Spam Bots
I dissagree with your position on E bay items: You are not paying for an item in a computer game, YOU ARE PAYING FOR SOMEONE ELSE TO FIND IT FOR YOU. It is all about Time and Money, and I believe that you can ALWAYS find more money, but Time is lost forever. Let me assure you that I have never bought any items from E Bay or any site, but I understand why most ppl do. The mindless thousands of MF runs i have done are (looked at from an outsider) a colossal waste of precious TIME. Imagine Spending 1000's of hours playing D2 to build up some great characters, the same time could be spent doing things much more productive (this is all point of view i know) and most of these things most ppl would agree as time bieng well spent.
But for the price of say a nice dinner for 2, you could outfit your character as godly as possible, what is a better deal?? in the time it takes you to FIND the items to trade with and outfit your character you could have earned 1000's of dollars in an average job much more in a good one. Whats a smarter use of your time, working and earning, or actually living a non digital life? or Spending countless days and long nights SEARCHING for that unattainable godly rune or unique? How much do you get paid for your TIME while playing d2? Now I understand the joys of a WF dropping, I am a d2 addict too, and i understand the feeling of pride at doing things the hard way, but Diablo is not reality, some day Diablo will be gone and all of us will have to move on with our lives, and where will those godly characters be then?? POOF!! gone with the click of a mouse. Then consider all the 1000's nights you spend feverishly playing this game and laugh at the dorks that spend considerably LESS time than you and I by coughing up some easily replaiced cash for items most of us all coveted. Did they enjoy the game as much as us?? probably, but we gave up TIME they only gave up money, who is better off?
So while i think buying items for real money is kind of geeky, how geeky is having a continual sore arse from all the time in front of the computer screen doing a million Pit runs. PPl with little money are the ones that are really opposed to buying items, mainly because they value money far more than time, people with a lot of money KNOW that they will always get more money but that TIME is limited