Was reminded of this by GW2Guru of all places...

Guild influence bonuses are far more powerful than ones bought in the cash shop, and there are currently no influence boosters of any sort in the microtransaction store.

I'm also pretty sure that mobs will drop, or people can craft the non-account based, non-cosmetic stuff.

Have a nice day.

Then is it that the people spending their money in the cash shop are getting a shit deal? Because that doesn't seem cool either.

@Dark_Lord_Spam: takes a lot of people's effort to unlock these bonuses, whereas a weaker version of these buffs can be obtained for one person's cash. I'm sure they will be balanced around release, this stuff is beta after all.

This is a really good point. The guru forums need to be reminded of this. They're smoldering in rage right now. Me, I'm not really worried about the cash shop being bad to players. Doesn't seem like Arenanet has any track record of being greedy/shitty to players. If you can earn anything via time in game that you can buy in the cash shop, then who can really complain?

@Dark_Lord_Spam said:

Then is it that the people spending their money in the cash shop are getting a shit deal? Because that doesn't seem cool either.

Not at all. Let's say you want to quickly level up an alt or don't have time to farm for hours in order to buy that nice armour you want. In those cases, you'll just buy the appropriate bonuses or gems that you can sell for gold.

The more i learn about the Meta layer over this game the less i want to play it.

@Dark_Lord_Spam said:

Then is it that the people spending their money in the cash shop are getting a shit deal? Because that doesn't seem cool either.

If you provide someone an option and they choose to take that option then obviously the option is compelling enough to take. If the option is compelling and people continue to choose it, it cannot be a rip off for those people. You may not think it is worth it, but everyone has different viewpoints on relative worth.