Fera

My guess is the price tag reflects NSs greed rather than Anets; at least I hope that's the case :|

They bill it as "but you get the base game free!" Doesn't do much for the veterans who don't need/want it

They made a mistake of putting a price out before revealing much of the expected content. People will take for granted the lack of a subscription fee or the massive amount of free content that was LS 2, and I think they forgot to account for that. Of course, GW2 is also the kind of game where you can easily afford to wait out a price drop, precisely due to the lack of a subscription fee (or mandatory gear treadmill, for that matter).