Not really. For like $10 or $15 (I honestly haven't looked at GW1 or its store in over a year), you can unlock every single skill in the game, including some elite skills (the rest you have to earn), for use in PVP without ever creating a character in the first place.
Interesting... I always kept hearing people say Arena.net did not "sell power". This sound like selling power.
But I also think this was not there when I played near launch.
What is there to do in GW1 when you hit level cap? (Which, by the way, is *20*...takes a couple days for a dedicated person, maybe a month for a less dedicated person.) There is very little actual content in the game that isn't "meant for leveling up to 20", there are very few "dungeons/raids", and there are no "events" (beyond some holiday stuff). All you have at 20 is "leftover leveling content" and PVP. Literally.
From my point of view? It was a campaign, once I was done with it I was done with the game. Box price was fair for just that, IMO.
I do ponder what it is about MMOs that so many people judge their viability on level caps and repeatable raids and not in content... I mean, I know GW did not have an insanely large amount of content, but given I was not paying monthly fee... well as I noted I felt it was worth the ride.
Reason I kept playing CoH was because of the content, not the cap nor the incarnate advancement. AE added a lot but it got hard to find content after a while, with everyone creating farms... making it hard to find any actual story arcs...
Anyways derailing... my point is, if there is no monthly fee and no significant cash shop, then the game that relies purely on a single up-front sale is very likely going to want to attract new players constantly more so than encouraging old players to keep playing. If that is not what happens, eventually their revenue stream dries up.