I am 50, completely done with all the main story like may on here. What I am mostly reading is people in the same bracket saying it is fine to gate and all that, Or "it is easy to catch up stop whining." Frankly that is a pretty horrible mindset. I would like to see a new player right now (not level 50, and has not completed the Main story) tell us that they are okay with paying for an expansion that they really can not use the day they buy it. That would make zero economic sense. Nor would frankly be a smart way to grow your player base to produce new content that a person that might be interested in trying to game thanks to the press, that they can not access.

If they let someone that buys the main game and expansion be allowed to choose to play one of the new classes from day one, how will that "hurt" us? It doesn't, not in the least bit. We are not affected either way. The Same could be said for the WoW players with mist of pandaria (monk class there was open to new players day one). You can make the argument that WoW in Lich king set the bar for gated classes (death knight required you to have a level 50 toon to play it), but their devs stated later this was a bad idea and would not repeat it. When Anarchy Online pushed out two new classes (keeper and shade) they made them available with the purchase of the expansion.

But in the end it is up the company and not us to decide how they want to sell and market the expansion.