Sad but true. but if we still stay here, reading stuffs, searching for every news ingame, and most of us, still playing, i think we can keep it as a hobby. ofc, it can be an expensive one, but always depends how much you expect from your free time....some ppl spending hundreds/thousands of $ for a bottle of wine or champagne, for expensive cars or a beautiful mistress. i understand some mad ppl buying also some stupid things, and for a worse graphic/gameplaying than our game... : https://successstory.com/spendit/most-expensive-virtual-items-in-video-games
and...also, for ppl who dont wanna invest too much, they can play a suport class, so hard to find a good tank/iss this days for eg, and yes, unfortunatelly now trading market its almost all based on selling/reselling items for hurry ppl who dont want to wait for a good oportunity. if u saw a +8 bloody set on 34 bill, for sure some one will buy it and resell for 45. even with precious bless resurection scrolls is the same situation