First off, welcome.
Secondly, as someone who played PWI, spent quite a bit of cash, and was still behind those with fatter wallets, I wouldn't recommend going back to retail.
Unfortunately, 1x rates aren't here, and may never be implemented because I know for me if I wanted to level at the same rate as PWI (to 150 nonetheless, on PWI the cap is 105), I'd go back to PWI. Which is why people are here--they want to level and get to the pvp aspect of the game as quickly as possible, no different than PWI, but you can't spend thousands of dollars only to still be behind someone who spent millions.
Most of the boutique items (barring a few things) are actually in NPC's. Fashion, charms, mounts, flyers, etc. Some mounts and flyers can be bought with epic coins or event tokens. How do you get epic coins or event tokens? Epic coins can be obtained through Bounty Hunter (henceforth known as BH), Phoenix Valley (PV), Godless Valley (GV, also known as rebirth Delta), and numerous other instances/events/etc. Event tokens are a little harder to get, but still doable. Participate in event such as Ares event and the random pvp events GM's run.
I think I covered it all. ^.^
