Blizzard's making a fukton of money off of the subs they have. Why would they be going F2P and giving it all up? Just because they're testing microtransactions doesn't mean they're going F2P; they're adding some F2P-like items/microtransactions to make some additional cash from people who are subbed AND are willing to spend even more. Any other scenario does not even make sense for a game that, even after losing over 1.5mil players, is still at a level of popularity that no other MMO in the Western market could dream of.

Why are so many new MMOs F2P nowadays? 9/10 MMOs come from Asia. They look the same, they play the same, they're the same cookie cutter pieces of crap nobody in their right mind would pay a monthly fee for, so they have to be F2P in hopes of attracting a few people with more money than sense and taste. Then there are the Western MMOs that had to go F2P soon after release because they tried to be WOW too much. It turns out, though, that WOW is better at being WOW than some unimaginative copy of it. I don't think anyone in the game development business caught on yet, so expect a few more big budget flops like SWTOR.

I'd gladly go back to the days when paying a monthly sub for playing MMOs was something to be expected. There was a lot of freshness and diversity and everyone seemed to have their own ideas about how to do things instead of trying to emulate their competitors in a pathetically desperate manner. And I'll gladly sub to this game if it turns out to be good after the first, "free" month.

That's how it's usually done. If you sub for 3 months, you get a discount. Bigger ones for 6 and then 12 months.