You're not at a disadvantage at all. All of the unobtainable items are just collectibles from old content. They don't make your character more powerful or anything.
You'll have to level up a character to the max level (60) and do content to get geared, but that's purely time and skill based. You can pay for a level boost or buy gold to skip that, but imo you're just paying to not play the game if you do that.