I think it is much more complicated that than - and not nearly as nefarious.Classic money grab move in my opinion...no way that it was an error. They just wanted to capitalize on subs and expansion hits for the studio sale.
I think dbg is basically in a "rebuilding" year - between all the hits they've taken - covid challenges, holly leaving, new tlps, database migration, a whole slew of technical failures, several long time developers leaving - it was just a perfect storm that falls heavy on us as the user. it really sucks - they probably weighed up delaying the xpac until its complete or releasing incomplete and decided on what they did for whatever reason.
like jande says I really suspect this will have a pretty rough impact on active players unless they hit us with some additional stuff here in an couple of months - otherwise its going to be a long year.