So obtaining gear that others need to pay for for its looks isnt pay to win to a great deal of people.
So isnt the potential leveling of alts faster.
1) What if a year from now, blizzard releases new spell effects that you need to pay for. That does not affect combat.
Or the ability to buy a level 80 new alt, that does not affect combat.
2) What if we took it a step further, blizzard releases new player models, but you need to pay for their use. That does not affect combat.
Or the ability to buy a level 90 alt(when the expansion level cap is 95), That does not affect combat.
3) What if we went further still. Blizzard now releases entirely new races. They revamped racials at this point, so no racial affects combat anymore, and provides a cosmetic distinction. In this way, this does not affect combat
Or the ability to buy a max level alt with max riding. This does not affect combat.
Everyone has their tipping point. For some people it was the gating of minipets a while ago, for some people now, its the selling of gear looks. A year from now we could end up in step 3 and it would still be for purely cosmetic and quality of life changes, but at this point, it certainly feels like pay to win.