For new players it may be unaffordable if they have already paid for faster flying . It was for me on my new alliance toon ( I learnt that you can’t mail gold to the opposite faction even if it’s your own toon 
) . But gold making is so fast , it’s maybe couple hours of questing or few BG wins.
I only have like 10k, 800 gold made me take a few days to consider whether I even wanted to buy it since it’s just for the pre-patch.
I’m glad I don’t play alts much.
What? 800 gold is like 10 minutes of doing some WQs.
It’s PvE. I know a lot of people love PvE–and that’s great for them–but I find it repulsive. Worse yet, time spent in PvE has an opportunity cost that forces me to miss out on what I really want to be doing: PvP.