classified assignments

They said all 1 year content will be free.

They said they didn't want to make the same mistake of splitting up the player base again, which happened in TD1 by "locking" the different story expansions and game modes behind a paid DLC wall.

Ultimately, not everyone could afford — or necessarily wanted — to buy all of the DLC for TD1, so the community was divided (heh) into different groups of people with varying access to different DLC; which only ended up hurting the experience for all players, by reducing the overall effectiveness of matchmaking, causing frustrating and a sense that some game modes were stagnant or "dead".

So this time around, all of the major story expansions and new game modes will be free to play for everyone, giving everyone the ability to matchmake for whatever they fancy no matter which edition they purchased. Hopefully, this should help to keep TD2's community stronger and more active in the future.

As far as the Year 1 Pass and these "Classified Assignments", I'll go out on a limb and say that it's probably just going to reward players with loot of a similar nature to the drops from named LZ bosses in TD1. Essentially, it's not going to be crazy overpowered and unfair, it's just going to provide a handful of bonus options for us to grind and farm each week. Ultimately, we'll still be at the wicked mercy of RNGesus :)