Y2K

Who remembers this horrible event? It was going to end the world and kill everyone. You would explode when new years happened. Oh no! People actually spent money on eBay and purchased full body haz-mat suits for fear of some biological plague that would befall the planet when all computers crashed. It was a time for goblins to profit off of the ways of morons.

2012 is the next date with similar 'doomsday' it's going to happen superstitious bull**** beliefs of the morons. Anyone who spends longer than 0.2 seconds contemplating the date on a calendar as an actual significant 'astral alignment' or other bogus excuse deserves to be robbed of all of their money because they do not want it.

It's not that questioning a common belief is a mistake. It's good to think for yourself. In this situation though, a very dangerous cultural conditioning presents itself and causes this fear. It is the 'stampede' effect. If you see 5 people running at you, screaming with a look of terror on their face, rather than assess any danger or take cover, you will 100% guaranteed turn and run with them, for fear of whatever this horrible danger is they are fleeing from. This makes for excellent television. Perhaps you have also heard of '6 killed in stampede!' at a soccer game or some public rally. Why do people put themselves in such dangerous situations, where death is a possibility, just to watch a sport? Because they do not think about it, it is a sub-routine that is hardwired into our brains to help us survive living on the plains of Africa.

But we do not live in Africa anymore, we do not have to worry about Elephants crashing into our Minivans. The film director will make money on the 2012 film because he is tapping our instinctual fear of being trampled, our stupid activity of trying to escape, our deep subconcious belief that the world is going to end for reasons we do not know.

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So how do we profit from this?

"internet know-it-all: Cataclysm is going to suck! It's the end of World of Warcraft!"
In that case, you had better get rid of all of your stuff to me so you can live under a rock, sure of yourself that you made the right choice.

"casual player: With all of this new content, I no longer need all of the old material I used to sell, it's worthless."
So sell it to me please, the next one of you will still buy it to level his trade and I will happily take your money.

"over-achiever: New things! I definitely want to be the first to have them (out of 11 million people, yeah right)"
So then you definitely need to buy the newest gears and have all of the best enchants even before there are not even 10 people leveled high enough to run a new instance with.

more examples are possible, but the truth behind it all is 'things are changing, I don't like change, I don't know what to do, I'm going to do what everyone else is (which means to run in panic) hope I don't die.'

Be the opportunistic Hyena, not the fodder Ox.