The writing was on the wall the moment they announced that every copy of WoD comes with a free 90. People were immediately talking about buying new copies of the game ($15 during the sale) buying WoD (~$40) and buying a character transfer ($25) totalilng $85.

The ability to do this was going to be there no matter what.

I think that blizz giving a distinct "Buy a 90" option is to give them a more realistic subscriber number count, rather than having tons of abandoned accounts with no characters on them.

The whole point of all of this, is party due to a survey that I took part in, regarding why people quit the game, and what would it take for them to come back. For many people, the biggest hurdle, is wanting to get back into the game, when a new expo comes out, but realizing that their character is in such low level gear that it's gonna take quite a while before they can even start to enjoy the content that they just purchased, and get easily discouraged and quit again. This won't give an advantage to anyone reallly, it just evens the playing field between players who never quit and have been at 90 and geared for some time, and people that may have quite one or more expansions ago. It's similar to the gear reset IMO, all of the WoD Quest rewards wil likey be better than anything from the timeless isle, at least past the starting zone.