Blizzard Sending Free Copies of Mists of Pandaria?

This is one of those stories that will be incredible if true. A Redditor, ShakaShaka, is claiming to have been posted a free boxed copy of Mists of Pandaria. In a post entitled “Blizzard is getting desperate,” ShakaShaka shows off the package he claims was from Blizzard, and some of the convincing marketing materials he received alongside it.

Without any history to go along with it, it’s hard to know the exact circumstances of the package being delivered. Outside of the fact that he said his copy of Mists of Pandaria was completely unprompted, we don’t know if he was a long time member of World of Warcraft, if he spent over a certain amount of money or if he’d had any contact with Blizzard about other matters in the past. It stands to reason that he was a subscriber previously (else the fact they’re mailing him things randomly might be considered slightly creepy), but how much like the average WoW gamer he is is hard to tell.

Are Blizzard really that desperate for subscribers that they’d give away physical copies of their latest expansion in the hopes that more than a small number of those sent units would return to the game, or is there something else here?