The problem with your argument can be flipped on its head: The players feel like they shouldn't invest in the game with so much content to go through just to get to the point the main portion of the players are at.


While I get the reluctance about having jump potions in the game, the fact remains that one of the most daunting barriers in the game right now is having to go through a lot of content to get to the main parts of the game where some friends who are also playing are at. As such, it becomes daunting and more than a few of my friends have stated that one of the major problems is that they feel there's too much to do to get up to my level. Even while I have offered to go through the content with them, not everyone in our gaming community wants to sit through a daunting amount of story to get to play with others.

Unfortunately, we're no longer in the time where people will gladly do the content and sink the time to do so. We are in a "now" mentality and that's how 2017 is. Games require to meld to the greater amount in order to survive. This will infuse the ability to spend some money in order to skip a fairly large portion of story and grind to allow users to play with friends.

And it isn't like they are getting an advantage, gear wise. They're simply getting a certain ILVL that will allow them to do the current content. And you need to review your definition of "Pay to Win" because it's clearly not the case.

P2W would be: You buy this item and you get a character fully leveled with fully maxed gear at that content.

Users still have to do the fights to get the gear. This just removes the grind portion.