There is confusion about "NoCD" (the tool with that name) and playing without a CD in your drive.
Playing CE mod without the CD in your drive is simple, easy, works, and is allowed: *if* you do not use a method that alters any of the on-disk files that make up an installation of D2/LOD.
Examples of methods that don't work: NoCD, d2loader (they modify game files on disk)
Examples of methods that work: Alcohol120% or BlindWrite and Daemon Tools.
The non-working methods conflict with the Mod because they alter the game files, and the mod installation alters the game files. The mod installation puts specific code & data bytes at specific locations in the game files; if these files aren't "stock clean" then the result is garbage. (Imagine gene-splicing to give you purple eyes, but your genes have been altered (by cancer).
The genes altered by the "PurpleEye" chemical or virus wind up being not the ones for eye color, but for regulating the heart rate... things don't wor ... *errrk*(thud).)
There is also concern to keep this realm free of "cheat tools", like "Map Hack" and "grabbit" and a great many others. Battle.Net was like a war zone, from Trigger-Hack-PK methods to trade scam tools to item-grabbing tools. The CE mod is about the opposite: we're to act like family. Whatever bad motives for use of these "cheat tools" that some people have, such people aren't wanted or welcome here. To whatever extent these "cheat tools" helped protect you on battle.net from the sociopathic grief-mongers, these tools aren't needed here, the griefers aren't here.
Example, Dueling is allowed. Parties agree before hand and fight in the PVP area in act 1 Rogues Camp. PKing is not allowed, It happened *once* to my knowledge since March 2004, and the PKer was promptly and permanently banned. Giving items away is allowed and expected. Stealing items (somebody else is muling so stuff is on the ground in Rogue's camp) is NOT allowed, has happened, and gets people banned until they make a convincing apology.
About other posts in this thread: Blizzard *is* attempting to install and use preventative/protective code to eliminate abuses; the results are not uniformly good. The Warden and The Root Kit are examples of *bad* ways to keep the realms clean. Muling has become very difficult since Blizzards "bot-detector" can't tell the difference between a pindle-bot and somebody muling.
Bots and scripts are flatly prohibited. One person playing at one computer is the intended method of use of the CE realm. Multiple computers and one person with a KVM switch, or with multiple keyboards, screens, and mice, with multiple simultaneous log-ins using one or more accounts, is flatly prohibited. Upon detection such accounts are banned. It is expected that we interact with each other.