when you play 3 years active and semi-active for another so 4 in total, of course you have "less" than someone playing straight every day fully active for 10 years
allods being a progressive games means the more time (and time is exchangeable with money in most cases) is spent, the stronger you become
contrary, those who have invested LESS time than you will be below you of course in means of possession of rare items. these items can make up a little of gear-deficit but not completely replace a proper set of gear.
so being a veteran, you can afford to slack a little bit
now of course things are not so strict in reality and basically, every gearreset (every few months) ANYBODY can be top competitive theoretically, given he is willing to put the effort it takes to properly gear up (confession: i often do not put the needed effort)
even if you have less items than another player and probably runes level 7 or 8, you will be able to win a 1 vs 1 fight against someone with "full items" (including runes lv 13)
also, if you play active, you will get all useable / reasonable items soon for sure for small money by picking up tradeoffers from worldchat or monitoring auctions
in the end it comes down to what spec you have (preparation, specific PVP build!), how good you understand the gamemechanics ("skill", knowledge) and most important your gear (effort) - itemshops and runes are a great bonus but not what decides the game at the end... itemshop and runes are compareable to a multiplier while gear is the base number... low base number, multiplier wont matter so much...
in the past i made a thread listing pretty much ALL factors if victory in a PVP battle, if you want to read and cant find it tell me and i will search and post it again
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so lets start discussing the point you made... there are people for which money is not a concern so much and there are those, who are not concerned about money at all due to being clever in RL or being lucky. it is a reasonable decision when running a FREE game to offer these people a proper "thank you" for donating. lets be honest. if you open 500 strongboxes... what do you get? basically the same as someone who just "snipes" a tradeoffer / auction - the main item. the box-opener gets those collectors coins (what REAL use do they have...?) and they get the prize of the "daily lottery" which is this turret that not really matters at he end, a larger sum of gold (does not really matter aswell if you donate you can get huge masses of gold by exchange anyway) and a special SKIN (again, gameplaywise irrelevant)
you just get things a bit faster than if you wait for auctions or traders
AND there is the SMALL chance of getting the item a LOT cheaper in CASE you are LUCKY - some players enjoy this kind of gamble
in the whole game, there are only 3 kinds of strongboxes where i participated, i farmed 30.000 BC+ in advance for the lightningbolt and later the monolith. i won the lightning bolt VERY lucky after a few boxes already - so it was even ceahper than buying from auction or trade
the monolith however i spent over 30.000 BC in total (also farmed) and barely got all the 100 parts needed to build it
all other items i bought directly for gold from an auction or direct trade which saved me a TON of gold
for reference: being an ACTIVE farmer makes you AROUND 350 BC a day, being an ACTIVE trader means no limit in gains, just like in RL
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premium bonuses are aswell nice (really) but just a matter of comfort at the end of the day. what of these things is actually useful? a dedicated player has all these things (only exception is the automatic emergency suit repair thing) so he wont need them anyway. though its maybe interesting for example to get this coremorpher or these temporary level 13 runes or whatever. when i looked at the boni i saw nothing i do not already have and want (again, only exception is the automatic emergency suit repair thing, but you can automate that otherwise so its not relevant)
other than that: some special emojis (???), more of these BG emblems (you get them anyway) - i dont remember the rest accurately, it was something not relevant to me
about runes in general, as noted above, they are pretty much a multiplier of the power of your gear
having the highest level of runes, there is not so much difference to someone having them a bit lower. i can comfortably say with level 8 runes, you dont really need to worry
you might want to try seeing the cash shop as something that does not demand anything of you. try to see it as an option to get a little "thank you" if you donate for this wonderful game - a thank you as of getting things a bit ahead of those who do not donte
so why would you donate 200$+ ? there are only 2 reasons to do so. "1" is you want things faster than through ingame-gold-gaining and "2" is you want to support the game. for some its maybe a mix of both.
if one would like FF14 or wow better than allods, i assume he would play these anyway? why wouldnt he?
i play allods because i like it more than these games, i really love this game; still. only wish i had more time to play it