What in god's fuck.
I can only imagine the weeks before they had to make this reveal; the realization that WoW-types are declining in favor and popularity and profitability, the debut of a fresher combat experience in TERA and Guild Wars 2 and the upcoming TITAN, which, by the way, is Blizzard's way of saying that even they are getting off the WoW train pretty soon, the realization that the HERO Engine is... subpar (putting it mildly) at best, that not even STAR WARS in the traditional MMO format can keep subs up reliably AND that its method of having fully voiced dialogue renders it quite difficult to be profitable, and so on and so forth.
But even though the announcement would earn them a nice, slow hatefucking with a barbed mallet, they knew they had no choice; somehow 2007 disappeared and now, in 2012, they have to show off a HEROic WoWClone with barely any TES elements and boring hotkeyed combat, full of fully voiced dialogue at an E3 with people still hyped about the upcoming retail release of games like Guild Wars 2 and salty as all fuck about THIS ONE, and make people like it enough to buy it and pay monthly for it when it comes out in 2013, which may or may not be a TITAN beta year.
I do not envy them their position.