I just thought about an aspect of the game that has not been talked about much.
There are other upgrades other than purchasable ones.
Your specialties can be upgraded ONLY with Cert points.
Do understand, you cannot purchase cert points, however you can boost how fast you can acquire them (even effectively double them with a subscription).
So you can level your guy slow or fast depending on the certs.
the nice thing about this is you get a sense of progression with or without boosts.
to give an idea of the feel of boosts to xp gain I'll use a game to game comparison
a 50% boost is kind of like leveling in vanilla WoW compared to vanilla EQ
a 50% boost with a sub is like leveling in current WoW compared to vanilla EQ.
I hope this helps to clarify the pay to win fallacy.