Eastern Orthodoxy: Purgatory or Not?

From a layman who considered joining the Eastern Orthodox:

"When I began looking at the issues separating Catholics and Orthodox, it turned out that a lot of them were more semantic than substantive. If I became Orthodox, I would have to accept more Catholic things than I at first thought: purgatory, for example. Orthodox don’t traditionally use the word purgatory for the purification that happens after death, but they acknowledge that such a purification happens. They pray for the souls of the departed, which makes sense only if those prayers can help the departed in some way.

Rather than using the image of fire for the purification (cf. 1 Cor. 3:10–15), Orthodox often picture the soul passing through a series of "toll houses" on its road to heavenly glory. It’s a different image, but it points to the fundamental reality that the saved soul may have to undergo some form of ordeal before it is admitted to full heavenly glory.

This seemed to put the question of purgatory in the category of the "word fights" that Paul warns us against (cf. 1 Tim. 6:4–5; 2 Tim. 2:14). It doesn’t matter if the word purgatory is used to describe a particular post-death reality or if precisely the same image is used to allow us to imagine it. The fundamental reality is the same, as is its most obvious practical implication in this life: prayer for the dead. I would have to accept that whether I became Catholic or Orthodox."