As a Veteran from the Beta, I find myself hard to believe that Blizzard hit this low.
No matter what people say about "It's not pay to win", "It's cosmetic only and doesn't affect in-game". It does affect in-game and it does affect MY gameplay. And it only demonstrates that Activision is trying to suck everything from it's customers and what Blizzard (which only started with a Warcraft small stand in a Con) once was.
1) Starting by the EXP Boost potion. Saying it's not a disadvantage it's ignoring facts and those people are actually looking it in the wrong direction. The moment you create a chance for someone to get a Boost for a microtransaction that will become the new standard and whoever doesn't own enough resources to activate one will be in disadvantage by comparisson.
Say I have a deadline to level a guild to start raiding in one week. And there's two guilds, one with access to EXP Boosts and another who doesn't. The one who can afford EXP Boosts will start raiding before the one who doesn't, based on the same timeline, that's a clear unandvantage for a realm first for example.
And by the social aspect, It's going to be really funny trying to level with people and enjoying doing a few quests to find out that 30 minutes later I will be playing alone again because that someone else is playing in a completely different zone already. Comparing to almost meeting the same pearsons for days in different zones in the early ears of the game, it sounds like a massive play for even more dead low-level zones.
2) What if I play for the cosmetic part of the game and not for the number-stats in the technical part of the item? So. What if my concept of winning is having a different colored clothing/harder to access and not higher numbers or stats? Being able to change cosmeticly your character by "offering gold to the gods" seems like a slap in the face and a life-ease for the poorer customers which their only chance for a cosmetic change was by unlocking content and wasting time.
Basicly if my only chance to get that shinny good looking helm was to raid, put effort and lose some time in it, now today I only need to put my credit card info and completely alienate the "Gaming" part of this game.
Making items/cosmetic/boosts/anything that is only obtainable by a factor other than the game itself, it's what we used to call in the 1990's...? ....What was the word.....?
"Cheating" (verb - An immoral way of achieving a goal)
Except here you click "Buy This" instead of doing typing /cheatcode.
With the new Final Fantasy just comming out, I just have to say, thanks Blizzard for ignoring and spitting on your long paying customers and for easing my choice.