I don’t recall if they’ve confirmed seasons for DIV yet, but I’d expect it since they were so popular for D3 and are a way for them to keep interest in the game with limited dev time. Regarding newer diablos, Diablo III has Seasons, which are very similar in concept to ladders, so there’s still resets. This means that someone is probably willing to trade or give you a spirit on your non-ladder character if you choose not to remake a ladder character. Since ladder characters eventually become non-ladder characters, along with their items, ladder only runewords do exist in non ladder.
After that 6 month period the current ladder characters are converted to non-ladder characters, and a new ladder is started where everyone starts again from scratch. D2 ladders typically last about 6 months, so while I understand starting over stinks, you’ve got plenty of time in the current ladder still to play and build ladder only runewords. A Diablo II mod inspired by Path of Exile with a global community. You can still build ladder runewords with the version of Diablo you have, you just have to start a new character on the ladder.
If you want a refund, I think you can request one through Blizzard’s support pages, but I’m not sure what their policy is with respect to refunds for things like this. The people responding to you to help you are just other players, so we all have no control over what Blizzard does as far as resets and refunds.
