I can understand the prices on server transfers, so people don't do it all the time and cause too much overhead, although that's debatable since server transfers are queued and don't happen instantly. Then there's also the consideration of how people in games like shooters change servers all the time, far more than in WoW, and they never crash, but I digress.
Then there's the outrageous prices on name changes and appearance changes, as if changing a couple of values in a database capable of processing millions of entries in a few seconds will suddenly crash the server system.
Now they're thinking of allowing us to pay real money to insta boost to 80?
Has anyone stopped to think why? Who is being paid for getting me to 80? Is there some guy behind a monitor who just approves everyone who instantly wants a level 80 character? Level 80 is a value in a database for your character which goes something like this:
HerpDerp
Class: Herp
Spec: Derp
Level: -5
You want to be 80? Change that value to 80. You're now 80, boom. No really, it's not much more complicated than that, I can assure you. People want their programs and file systems to be as simple as possible to avoid quadratic, cubed and higher complexity algorithms from bogging down their systems.
These databases work around the clock as people constantly create and delete alts and level them and whatever, they do it automatically and don't crash, so where is the payment in "paid 80s" going to?
Aaaah who am I kidding with all these explanations and attempts at rationalization about the principle of this thing, you're probably gonna boil this thread down to "lol 15$ isn't that much it's less than a movie ticket" (no it's not).