Abriael's completely right. I have not been 'officially following' all the dev posts religiously, I read them when I see posts and try to get the sense from gaming websites. But it was always my impression, without being able to quote like an academic research paper, that SE would give all players a NEW 30 day trial at the launch of ARR. Not the suspension of pay after the failed launch of 1.0; not the suspension of pay near the end of 1.0 as they got ready to cease billing for the current iteration of the game, a NEW TRIAL of the new game on release. Abriael posted the documentation for that expectation--they said they would.

We could debate best business practices all day long, and what will be better for the game's launch and community. To me, it's undoubtedly the case that a free trial will bring back lots of old players who might not otherwise play. But the main thing is it's always a bad practice to say one thing and then do another--WITHOUT some sort of explicit attention to it and why you chose to do that. If you don't call it out, it makes it look like you're just breaking a promise, and clearly people will notice.