in allods you can buy many things for $ instead of playing a long time to get certain items
so you either invest $ or time to get stronger
however there is still a lot to do, even if you use a lot of $
since you can get everything by playing, even if it might take some time, i would not call allods paytowin (there is a NPC that let you exchange gold for BC)
"pay to boost" would be the most fitting term since those who pay usually have things earlier than those who do not; they boost their char
on the long however it gets more and more even anyway
personally i play free myself for some years now, and although there IS some difference to those who play "full cash" its not THIS big
also, there are not so many ppl who really have 6 level 13 runes
what matters MUCH more is gear, which is gained by playing and cant be bought directly (there are some ways to make gearig faster through $ but you still need to play and do a lot)
those who call allods a full p2w game are most likely those who are frustrated and / or bad players and instead of admitting they fail because of their attitude / skills they search excuses for their bad performance in the payment-system
since there is a subscriptionserver where noone can get anything faster by $, everyone should be happy since those who do not like a free to play system can stay away from it, however those who complain all the time will stll complain since they complain for the sake of complaining
reality is that this game has improved various times a LOT and is worth playing more than ever before
you wrote you left at patch 3.0 so you will be over whelmed by the amount of new improvements in thisgame
the only flaw right now is that there is a silly new kicking system in battlegrounds, there e other topics regarding this, but its possible to deal with that