Having XP or profession boosts 5 months after launch is a lot less bad than if they had it at launch, that's for sure. However it's clear they designed the game in a way where they had those boosts and "QOL improvements" in mind, evident by some of the patch notes where they actively removed some of the things they plan on selling for real money on the store. That's where I have a problem with it.
It's not like for example how wow was when it first came out. I know 15 years ago was a different time than today, but bear with me. WoW back in the day took a LONG time to level to max for most players, we're talking about months. But it was done that way because they saw leveling as a type of content, not because their intention was to sell leveling boosts half a year after release. To me that's a big difference.
When something comes up 2 years after a game is released and a developer decides to "fix" the issue by selling a QOL item in a store, it's still differnent than designing a NEW game intentionally with that QOL thing missing, just so they can sell it to you a few months later. A game that's still in alpha/beta shouldn't think about selling QOL items in a real-money store, they should think about implementing their features in a way where no QOL purchase is needed. That's my issue with that.
I didn't need a streamer or youtuber to tell me these issues, somehow people always respond to these things with "oh another person who just listens to streamer propaganda". It's the result of having a brain and using it, and not being okay with extremely player-unfriendly business practices. And yes, even while I don't particularly like it, I'm more okay with a 10+ year old game slowly becoming that way, than a new game starting this bullshit in alpha.