Couple points.
1) We didn't get in 'touch' with several million players. We only 'spoke' with subscribers, which was far short of several million. You don't speak to Blizzard customers as a whole, unless Blizzard says you can
2) The move was initially one we thought would be beneficial both financially and business wise. We never made a penny on the advisor and kept the service up and running for internal reasons (To allow ourselves to test the tech as obviously it's HIGHLY useful in an MMO if done at launch) as well as the ironing out of teams and processes. The biggest reason for me was I was a fan of the service and knew there were others, and we wanted MMO players to know as a company we recognize the immense investment in TIME as well as money that MMO's are, and will respond accordingly with Copernicus.