I've honestly no idea where this 'minimum effort' thing to afford tokens comes in. The most gold I've had on a character is 20k, if that.
More on-topic; I prefer buy to play. Other games seem to do it better, and with less exorbitant costs on their shop items.
Like not 10 bucks per pet, 15 for a helm, or 60 bucks for a boost. Which seems ludicrous to me after seeing ESO's and GW2's pricing for things like that.