I hear where you're coming from, but I'm looking at it purely from the business point of view (Imma be a devil's advocate here for a bit, so spare me flak). Once they went officially F2P (as the current B2P model was unsustainable due to numerous factors), Rob from accounting probably came knocking and asked about the future monetization methods. Once the papers were stamped, it doesn't really matter what historical business model anet adopted. (though personally I do prefer B2P model as it creates a bit more engagement from the developers to deliver).

Even though free accounts work great as de-facto demo (offering entire out of the box content minus xpac and a bit), and restrictions are a strong incentive to purchase full game, the point still stands. You can play the core GW2 for free.

To be fair, though I agree that RNG boxes and pay locked, artificially scarce content (which is what we're witnessing here) is bit shit, I think that since we're officially F2P, we're going to see more of it and there isn't much we can do about it.

Question is not whether it offends us who paid for it, but whether it brings enough profit to allow Anet to make profit/keep its investors happy, and ultimately it's up to them to balance it out so everyone benefits without turning the game into pay to win fuckfest (Iddeally they get cash money and we get a game that's supported with additional content).

P.S IMHO it's important to remember that at the end of the day, as we both know, Anet is a business. They gotta make money, and IMHO, so far they're doing it in a VERY non-intrusive way, and we should be happy they didn't pull BDO or something even more pay-to-win to achieve the same result.

TL;DR I agree, it's bit shit, but it could be a LOT worse mate.