The only "restrictions" current event has is recoloured lycan wings, TT soul shield 1-3 (hey, you can get 1-5 freebie from msp so who cares) and some octas (who uses events for gems anyway?). So basically only wings. Irrelevant cosmetic. Boo-hoo.
"Meaningless updates that bring nothing new to the game". I remember a year or 2 ago people were *complaining* that we're getting updates and content way too fast, making f2p players unable to catch up. Now that it slowed down, someone's unhappy again?
You don't really have to spend that much money to be relevant. If you really want something from store you can sell gold or hoard season rewards (in my case this reset I managed to get 15k hmcoins (and 13k of those on 1 main character).
Dungeons and raids are constantly getting nerfed before next tier content even comes out, which I certainly don't think encourages p2w.
Honestly, those 2 people that left, good riddance. One of them was already bashed for days on other social media so I don't need to go over that here. The other one no one really cared either way. Point being, ever since they left, people's questions and community interraction have increased immensely, especially on twitter. As for streams - no, they're not *good*, but they're hell of a lot better than what Liinxy and Jonathan gave us, and there's still room for improvement.
I mean, of course the game that runs on money would encourage you to spend money. If there was nothing worth spending money on the funds would run out within weeks.