Okay, so you've said that you're willing to buy expansions if you get that far. That's literally the only mandatory Real Money spending, as the expansions are not on the gem store. It would be VERY slow, but you can farm gold to get Living World Seasons 1-5, which, with the expansions, is the entire game, and the moment you buy an expansion, free-to-play restrict
Reasons to use steam: wallet funds, regional pricing (if it would benefit you), easier to buy the complete package. Reasons to use vanilla: can link a GW1 account later if you want the legacy rewards, Anet gets more of your money. Otherwise they're functionally identical and can play together on the same servers. 26.
Its actually a really fare model. Probably one of the better ones ive seen in terms of being player friendly in an mmo. I mean dota 2 is free 2 play and gives you everything, but it also has a different way of things. I think hte website has when the restrictions are lifted at which levels. 9/10
nbkji.