That's not funny. Some people can spend hundreds of hours trying to get an item.
It's not important if the item is "real" or not. If you spend 500 hours trying to get something, you are going to care if you lose it.
Ane even there, 500 hours is not a lot for an item. You need to be high level to get the best items, so first, you must spend months and years leveling your characters and acuiring decent items, then once who have all that, you can start looking for that powerfull item.
And what happen if there is a limited number of items? What if you spent 2 yearstrying to get a virtual house, and once you have the recqired level and item recquired, you find out there are no more houses available. Worse. What if you did manage to get a house, but someone steal it from you?
I've played Asheron's Call for 3 years, for an estimated total of more than 9000 hours, and that's the minimum. This mean if I take all the hours I played Asheron's Call in a years and add them all togheter, I would have played 4 months non-stop. Without sleep, without food, without talking or going out. I did that 3 years. Do you think I would not mind losing my account? I could have spent that time working instead, and at 10$ an hour, I would have made 90 000$
Here's the ebay link to the Asheron's Call section.