I'm a huge fan of quality scopes. It is fairly rare for a scope to be go bad, which means that there is one less thing to trouble shoot when things go bad.
As well, there is the lifetime warrantee on Leupolds that I am a huge fan of: A buddy bought a used rifle with a dinged up Leupold on it. He sent it (the scope) away and got a brand new one in the mail in short order, no questions asked. I think is was a VXII or III.
Another reason for quality scopes is the low light resolution. In the middle of the day you won't notice the issue, but when the last light of the day is slipping away along with that buck of a lifetime, then you will be glad for having ponied up for the better glass. Larger objective lenses also have a factor in this as well, but good glass is good glass.
If you can look through some different price point glass you will see what mean. I wish I could afford Zeiss, but in the meantime I will have to make do with my other scopes...