Expansions are game content. If you want GW2 Heart of Thorns, you must buy the game content. Otherwise you do not have all game content.
Not quite. In this case, anyone can buy the paint. It’s like going to a home improvement/hardware store and buying some fence posts and they give you your choice of 16 colors (to keep consistent with boundless) for free. You decided, eh, I’d rather have this extra 17th color that they’re going to charge me for. ANYONE can buy this 17th color, it’s not restricted whoever has some holy god-like being’s blessing. The only thing is, they have to pay for it. If they don’t want to pay for it, they don’t get it, but they have 16 other options, or even combinations of those to use for different parts of the fence.
This offering a more exclusive 17th color (or skins/vanity items) appeals to the economic idea of conspicuous consumption, which is a topic introduced by an economist/sociologist named Thorstein Veblen (who, incidentally, is an alum of my alma mater!).
As far as I can tell from this post from ben that few seem to have noticed, there’s going to be horizontal aesthetics, vertical stats:
I am not against vertical wearables AT ALL, nor am I against aesthetic progression. Just to put that out there. I’m just trying to compromise with the vision of the game while arguing for skins/vanity items. So it seems we agree on this point of wearables needing vertical progression stat wise, not just not on non-game-affecting aesthetic visuals that are offered fairly to anyone who pays for them.