The entire point of the game is to find loot. What is the point of just buying everything to…find loot? If you bought all the best stuff you have no reason to farm gear anymore…so who is funding these sites? It is like Blizzard is doing it to force people to go play Diablo 4 (Which I assume is NOT filled with bots and third party site spam).
I would love to play on a player hosted server with the upgraded graphics and no spam/lag,
Not to people who don’t want to spend time playing the game to find loot. A lot of these people are those that look up builds on IcyVeins and Maxroll, realize it’s going to take eons to find all of the gear, so they look up pricing on the items, throw down the money for the gear just so they can be the envy of others in the game… Thus further fueling the demand for bots/RMT shops to exist.
These are likely the same people that complain that they have full time jobs, kids, other hobbies/games to play, and the drop rates are too low for those reasons, but they still play the game.
Don’t ever ask these people to play The Campaign for North Africa. (Don’t ask me to play that game either… lol)
I doubt these people would play online tho.
They’re exactly the type of people who play online. WoW is crawling with them, and those players are fueling the RMT side of WoW.
Those who are in favor of /pX.
JK, but this is how a /pX enjoyer is talking and pretend to know everyone xD
I know quite a few people who buy their gear because they hate farming and leveling and just want to do PVP.
That actually looks pretty fun. 
Inst that king of strange tho? Who would want to pvp on ladder?
I bought once gear for Sroc for $20. After 3 days of lvling there no more feel of advancement.
You would think buying gear on ladder would be antithetical to playing ladder, yet here we are two decades later.
Not really strange at all tbh. More people playing so there’s more of an incentive to get gear/levels to pvp if that’s your thing. Though I know people on NL that do it too.
I am not talking about ethical side. People buy gear since D2 started. I just have hard time to belive there is big enough paying player base for these shops and botters. Especially now when D2 is played by not so many people. I would bet a lot of botters must struggle to actualy sell their gear.
I meant that the point of ladder is to start fresh, but playing a fresh ladder just to turn around and buy gear makes playing ladder pointless. If the idea is to buy all the best gear that you have from last ladder season, then it makes the fresh start of ladder meaningless. One of those mental gymnastics that D2 players love performing.
I know lol, finding gear is like main content of game. So buying it is just pointless as you rob yourself of that. Some people i think do it for feeling of accomplishment from having epicly strong character first before others i guess. I kind of get it as this was like third ladder when we were first group on hardcore in world and it kind of feels good to achiev something. But is it really achievement when you buy gear? I dont think so.
There are probably a few reasons.
If I were to take myself as an example, I would buy items to achieve 2 things.
In other words, a kind of farm character that is not about a journey through the game, but a pure tool.
The feeling of having this always comes from the reset of the season, i.e. always back to 0. So it’s a compensation for getting everything stolen once, just to have it ready again quickly.
I’ve always wanted to see what it’s like to have a bone necro maximized, so this is a good way to do it.
So it’s not about being superior to other players or being admired.
It’s banal self-interest and if runes cost pennies somewhere, then it’s an option after all this time.
When I go into a new game, that never comes to mind. Because then it’s about the whole path, not about some min/max thing that is then worthless there.
In D2 here, everything is so well known that at some point you want to try some skills at max. So it’s the last level you want to climb in this game, because everything else is already done, but you just can’t do it the normal way, for x reasons like lack of motivation to torture yourself.
This is also one of the reasons why RPGs are better advised to expand the game with story things instead of building endgame towers and, above all, to combine the development of the character’s abilities with it instead of increasing numbers via items.
An exaggerated item spiral then creates all these problems, such as performance thinking, competitive scenarios, item purchasing, bots, etc. Because it’s no longer part of the actual RPG to that extent, but rather an imposed content that does more harm than good to the games and appeals to a completely different audience than all the RPG players. They don’t play RPGs because of an endgame scenario, but because of everything before it.
This is one of the reasons why all RPGs are on the wrong track and not satisfying many fans of the genre.
I recall a while ago, someone that did high level PvP saying their community was keeping the game afloat by spending large amounts of money on items. While the argument was completely absurd (they are harming the game by incentivizing the multiplication of bots without even guaranteeing a significant amount of the money goes back to the game’s maintenance), I think it gives a good peek at the mindset of people spending money on RMT.
The RMT allows them to be competitive with others of their community. A large factor is that spending their money is what makes them even able to play the game in the way they enjoy.
Spending even more money is what is going to give them an edge over the others. A decent roll rather than a crappy one, an exceptional roll rather than a decent one, a near-perfect roll rather than an exceptional one, and a perfect roll rather than a near-perfect one, even if the difference is imperceptible, they’ll take any edge they can afford. This is what drives items to such absurd prices, some people having so much disposable income they can afford to throw thousands of dollars for a difference they aren’t even able to notice.
The practice is normalized in their community. A significant amount of people around them are spending money on items, so it’s something that is seen as normal.
They don’t understand the harm it causes to the rest of the community, and even think it’s a good thing to throw money at a game, not understanding they are incentivizing attitudes that harm the community, both from the devs that are incentivized to push sales of power, and from third actors that are incentivized to get their hands on items at all costs, even if they are barely legal (bots) or even illegal (account theft).
Most of the issue likely comes from both Musk-like actors that have so much money and a capitalistic point of view that makes them spend absurd amounts of money on trivial things without caring about the consequences, and people with a tendency for addiction, that will compulsively spend more money than they can afford.
rarely read so much horse 
I don’t see the harm to the community. Those that want items to hold value, longer, just want to be able to sell those items or trade them for things they need, which is different than buying them how, exactly? Then there are those like myself that might jump into a baal run to get a few crucial levels but don’t even look at what drops and otherwise self find everything. Some don’t even do the experience boosts from party play. To us, the bots and the RMT sales don’t matter a bit, so people complaining about them just seem like hypocrites.
What it really boils down to is envy that other people have what you don’t, sooner than you could, or without the effort that you put in. If you’re really doing it clean the effort is self-rewarding and you don’t care what anyone else has or is doing. I use those people for experience to cap levels in between nightmare and hell to make my journey smoother, I’m happy they opened their wallets.
Then you are completely clueless. There is no better way how to say it. How can anyone think that this doesnt harm community is beyond me.
I explained why. It doesn’t affect anyone not looking to gain from value lasting longer, which is no different than buying the stuff. It has no effect on me because I don’t trade. Therefore from my perspective it doesn’t hurt the community. But way to make an assumption about me without any counterargument. It lets me know I’ve already won the argument without having to lift a finger.
I play all the time and have never once given RMT or bots a single thought while I was playing. The ones that do care about them are looking to somehow profit from their absence. Prove me wrong, Mr Clueless.