Q u o t e: So...
if you're modifying your files, your cheating.
Yes. It's in the terms of service for Battle.net. Did you not read that red text that was up in the lobby when you picked a character to game with? It was up there for a month. That's why your characters were deleted from battle.net. You can go play on open Battle.net or some other server.
D2Loader allowed you to defeat the "only one copy of D2 on the same machine at any one time." It also cut down on the overhead for farm bots on trading sites. Which I would imagine would have been at least 50-80% of those closed accounts.
Q u o t e: if you're using any items you trade for, your cheating.
How so?
Q u o t e: if you rush, your cheating.
There's been level requirements for doing the Ancients for quite some time now. You can't graduate to a new difficulty unless you've done the Ancients. Unless that bug is still there. Anyone I've helped out lately has wanted their Ancients defeated.
Q u o t e: if you mule, your cheating.
Has anyone been banned for muling?
Q u o t e: so essentially...
if you're doing anything other than punching your way through the game using only gear you find on that specific character, your banned.
No, that's what we call single player mode. Enjoy.