1) They know that a lot of wow player are going to play SW:ToR.
2) They know that they can’t prevent that.
3) They know that SW:ToR will have the best phase of every MMORPG (start phase) while WoW is entering the “end of expansion blues”.

The best thing they can do is let as much people as possible start playing SW:ToR and then draw them out of SW:ToR as fast as possible. Every player that leaves SW:ToR leaves a few “friends” behind with one less online friend. The more friends that leave, the less you feel “at home” in SW:ToR because it feels more and more like a railway station and less like home. And player will have to play more and more with randoms because their friends leave (which most player don’t like).

That’s what Blizzard did, in my opinion, to turn potential future SW:ToR player into SW:ToR tourists:

– They’ve delayed D3 and sacrified the christmas sale only to be able to release it short after SW:ToR to pull player out of SW:ToR.
– They will also release 4.4 or panda-beta a few month before or after D3.
– We haven’t heard anything of Starcraft. I’m sure they have something to add too. DoTA?
– The one year pass is only their next mind trick to get you to play some WoW instead of SW:ToR.

And, hey, I haven’t seen anyone mentioning it but panda sounds like another “half expansion”. Less new races then TBC, less new starting areas then TBC, less zones then TBC, less heroics then TBC, no normals in contrast to TBC, less raids then TBC and again only 5 level. Only this time they haven’t spent a big chunk of their budget to redo the old world. It might very well be that panda comes out during Q1 or Q2 2012.

Also I thought it was a basic cashflow rule that money now is always better than money later, that’s the other reason I’m confused.

When I showed the deal to my daughter, who really wants to play a panda NOW, she thought about it for a moment or two and then said, “That doesn’t seem like a very good deal. Let’s just wait.”

By forcing players to have a monthly tab from which the FAQ states can’t be cancelled perhaps they are using all of their power to keep players for a year or atleast make them aware that WoW still exists with the other MMOs release new year.

Right now, this is the best that Activision/Blizz could do against ToR coming online. Diablo III must really have big issues, otherwise you could bet dollars to doughnuts that they’d have released it a week before ToR. Now that they can’t, this annual pass is the best they could do.

They’re gunning for the people like me, who can only afford one sub at a time, and hoping that the lure of a “free game” will keep me from defecting to ToR. Well, whether or not I defect to ToR is irrelevant, because I wasn’t planning on purchasing Diablo III. (If I was thinking of trying any single player RPG, it’d probably be Dragon’s Age, but that’s just me.)

Of course, I suspect that Rohan is right in that this is also a preemptive strike against Diablo III defectors from WoW. I know of a few ex-guildies who were probably going to unsub from WoW in favor of D3, and this will probably keep them in the fold.