To be quite honest I think making HoN free-to-play is good BUT, it will only destroy the current competitive scene even more as matchmaking did...
All players should have access to play all the heroes or they will never play the actual game. Atleast that is/was the reason why I liked HoN so much, you only had to pay 1 time to play the full game but now all the new players will only try a few heroes and get their "HoN-heroes" impression based on the heroes in the pool they are given.
Also these different account-status's are to me slightly confusing and I do not like it with the idea that they have split up matchmaking based on if you are able to play all the heroes or not.
Might be great marketing for increasing Heroes of Newerth as a game but in my opinion the competitive scene will not grow/not grow enough before Dota2 arrives and then players will start to leave HoN for Dota2.