I also believe (my personal opinion, don't jump at me for voicing it) that the raiders are a big part of keeping the game alive.
Between patches, when most casuals have finished all they're interested in and suspend their sub til next patch, and I know a lot of people who do just that, it's the raid groups that still log in. They will still run dungeons to cap tomes, to get gear for other jobs to maybe play in raid one day (granted not all do, but I do just that), they will log in to get their weekly clears, they will work on maybe getting that one elusive item dropped and they will fight for their clears til the last minute before servers go down for next patch. And they continue to pay their sub.
So I say, it's nice of SE to finally show their raiders some love. People keep saying it's just 1% of the playerbase, but it's that 1% who keeps their subs up continually in order to raid, while many other players are already off somewhere else waiting for new content.