Guild Wars 2

Yknow, i was looking back at the original post-Living Story trailer. And I realized that there was really no reason why we could have been told this was an expansion from the beginning.

This wasn’t some strange take on the expansion model that would need proper explanation. It was simply an expansion pack. No real reason to be so secretive about it. All it did was make people argue over what the thing was. People weren’t even convinced it was an expansion.

Why do that?

And I get this suspicion that there’s a bit too much secretiveness for their own good. Some misguided attempt at mystique?

Now we have information only available in interviews, such as only one specialization being available at launch, without any assurances or idea of timeframe for when these things will be expanded.

A good example is the supposed reveal that the “spear” rytlock was using in the trailer was just a staff that the artists messed around with. That doesn’t add mystique. That just confuses people.

Key information such as this being a retail release or whether we need this expansion for certain content were buried in the FAQs, when they should be key parts of the value proposition of the expansion.

Things like specializations or masteries or new areas being revealed over time are things that can certainly be rolled out over time, like a fighting game reveals characters over time.

But we don’t really even know the basics. With the case of specialization, with only one specialization supposedly available, that big selling point may not even figure into people’s builds. This MAY be the framework for new specializations rolled out over LS updates, but we just don’t know.

I’m still excited for aspects for this expansion, but for now, there’s a lot of confusion that may not be warranted for the sake of secrecy.

if colin would say he’s making a dervish, but in the end they didnt have the mechanics,good enough ideas, and it was too unbalanced or just wont suit the game.
people will start complaning about not having a dervish instead wen something is ready they say we made a revenant the only thing they do now is fix stuff not build staff (IMO)

They’re not secretive enough. I mean they popped it and now we gotta…wait.
…and wait…
oh, also wait…

UGH.

I’d prefer if they’d just ninja revealed it later, with no warning, but an aleady established launch date and a price tag slabbed on it’s front.

It’s marketing. Build up the hype, then slowly release new bits of information to keep people interested.

Yes. Yes they are.

Keeping some things under wraps for the surprise/marketing is one thing, but effort is spend on developing content or making changes nobody asked for. And by the time they reveal the change it’s to late to factor in any feedback from the community because it’s practically done already.

YES!!!!

But that’s how Anet does business. They’re better now then before however. Previously they were secretive and quiet. At least now we’ve got Gaile Gray.

Remember back in the days when they told us what was PLANNED for 2013?
Remember what happened when some of those things didn’t work out as planned?

I think you have the reason for their secrecy there.

lordkrall.7241:

Remember back in the days when they told us what was PLANNED for 2013?
Remember what happened when some of those things didn’t work out as planned?

I think you have the reason for their secrecy there.

The classic counter argument (and boy have we discussed this to death on these forums) is not that ANet told us what they planned, but that they didn’t tell us when those plans changed.

But they did.
And people ignored that they did and keep shouting about not being told about it, despite being told rather long before the “deadline” happened.

Yes, they are far too secretive.

The forum complaints last year are and extremely bad warning sign that Arena Net needs to work on community relations. I think Arena Nets problem is that they obviously have no clue on what information to give and what to withhold. Since incorrect information can harm, they instead decide to keep back all information, even truly basic things like “we are working on an expansion” or “new class incoming”.

Arena Net needs to change, how they handle things currently simply does not work.

By watching the streams, reading the interviews and impressions I’d say they are not “secretive”, but cautious.

Their PR (read hype) is known to backfire and they said multiple times that their goal was to do this “just right”. Colin also seems to have answered a lot of question at the “after party”, my impression is that they don’t want to be misleading with the information provided. I like how after the release they said there will be no polearms and provided some very honest info on the subject.

The HoT release is handled exactly the way I like it, it a slow burning hype that reveals facts and expands on them rather than tease and disappoint, which is what ANet have been doing for the past 2 years.

lordkrall.7241:

Remember back in the days when they told us what was PLANNED for 2013?
Remember what happened when some of those things didn’t work out as planned?

I think you have the reason for their secrecy there.

I agree, to a certain extend.
They didn`t follow up on that and that backfired on them.

Are they too secretive? Hell yes. Mostly for PR reasons, which I start to hate, of course.

Sadly if you look around into interviews and some infos from the aftershow party, etc. then it pictures a very insecure Anet.

They announced this expansion as: Groundwork for the future
However isn`t that what the Living Story and Feature Packs are for? Building the groundwork for further development, so bigger things can easily fit in?

Now we hear that features of these “groundwork” feature packs will be retired (new trait systems. Of course it is a good move, I don`t argue that).

That systems shown are not finalized. Not in terms of balance or stability, but how they fit in in general.
It sounds like they build cool toys, but are unsure how to use them.

I may be exaggerating, but the secrecy and these behind the szenes “unsure” statements do not create security. More the opposite.

If they had any they would have given a release date. Would have shown something live.
They didn`t and that saddens me.

There are several big questions they could flat out say: No, won`t be in the pack, maybe later
Like the Pole Arms, who are apparently not part of the expansion, but the art team having fun.

This secrecy they try right now made sense before release. Now, with many people playing the game for over two years, voicing our opinions and concerns it does have no place.

I was burned a lot by the hype train of Anet`s PR. I don`t believe I am the only one there.

The expansion announcement for me was: “Yes, that is to be expected. People were asking for two years for this stuff.”
The only secret thing they got here is the story. The rest has been talked to dead and holding back that info is just annoying PR.

lordkrall.7241:

But they did.
And people ignored that they did and keep shouting about not being told about it, despite being told rather long before the “deadline” happened.

Where? Was there a blog post? Was it a small red post?
Info`s on these things is far too scattered.
As far as I know, the year went by and at the end of the year they might have said that.

In between I just remember people hoping. I hoped. My Guild at that time hoped (and in the end died).

It backfired. It happened.

Right now having secrecy about simple things is just showing that they are not confident in their work.
It is the complete opposite of what they have shown on stage.
However what have they shown?
Many Ideas, promises, a trailer and artwork.
Promotional material and work and progress stuff for a game that is overdue to an expansion.

They said they have people working on big things. They said that since the release.
Now they have shown that and it is still a work in progress.
I heard that the last 10% are the hardest.
Maybe they are there.
Not being able to give us infos on an release date at least. Having something playable with a beta marking (on a released game) is not showing confidence.

I am not saying that this is the truth, but because of this moment you were talking about I am very careful around them.
I mean, even the season finale of LS2 was a PR blender.

If you are talking about precursor crafting Jaken then yes they told us it was back burnered early Oct 2013 only 4 months after the original announcement in July that year.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Is-precursor-crafting-going-to-happen-or-not/first#post2981770

And this was talked about in detail when Colin announced it.

The problem is that they don’t seem able to adapt to climate very well. Secrecy would have been brilliant, if they had customer trust. But they made some pretty big missteps, and trust gradually eroded. There was a point mid to late last year where this hit an absolute boiling point, and they only marginally did anything about it (we STILL don’t know when traits are being fixed, or what’s happening with SAB).

The reveal was awesome, and the secrecy added hugely to that. But so much damage was done in what must have been 9+ months worth of angering the community that I don’t think it was worth it.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

The problem is that they don’t seem able to adapt to climate very well. Secrecy would have been brilliant, if they had customer trust. But they made some pretty big missteps, and trust gradually eroded. There was a point mid to late last year where this hit an absolute boiling point, and they only marginally did anything about it (we STILL don’t know when traits are being fixed, or what’s happening with SAB).

The reveal was awesome, and the secrecy added hugely to that. But so much damage was done in what must have been 9+ months worth of angering the community that I don’t think it was worth it.

Yes we do.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

Now that the HOT is out of the bag, we’re able to update this thread with more details. With the introduction of the new account based mastery system for end-game progression and growth in PvE, we’ll also be re-evaluating our other systems of character progression to ensure they match our over-all pillars and goals for Gw2.

In doing so: we’re going to be removing the current trait unlocking system currently on live and replacing it with a more simplified system that supports where skills-traits-specializations are going in the future. We’ll go into more details between now and the release of HOT on how skills, traits, and specializations will work in the new Gw2 world.

Thank you for all your passionate feedback on this topic – it not only helped our dev team lead to this decision, but has played a large role in helping us define how to build our exciting new account based mastery system for end-game progression in PvE as well.

Wayfinder.8452:

By watching the streams, reading the interviews and impressions I’d say they are not “secretive”, but cautious.

The difference is minor from the outside looking in :P

CureForLiving.5360:

Wayfinder.8452:

By watching the streams, reading the interviews and impressions I’d say they are not “secretive”, but cautious.

The difference is minor from the outside looking in :P

“Trust is like a mirror, you can fix it if it’s broken, but you can still see the crack in that mother kittener’s reflection.”
-Lady Gaga (who cares?)

lordkrall.7241:

Remember back in the days when they told us what was PLANNED for 2013?
Remember what happened when some of those things didn’t work out as planned?

I think you have the reason for their secrecy there.

What? What happened? Did the sky fall? Did the Earth burst into flames and fall into ruin?

No. Some people just got their knickers in a twist. Big deal And the truth is that ANet didn’t effectively manage expectations when their plans started to change, and that’s on them. What was needed was more communication, but they went radio silent, and by the time they fessed up that things hadn’t panned out the way they planned, it was too late to manage expectations.

Now contrast that ONE incident with how many times people have been upset with them for NOT communicating with us. I would argue that the long-term effects of not communicating effectively are much worse than a single incident that they themselves were partially responsible for.

I think that being terrified to say anything for fear of being held accountable is a pretty cowardly way to do business.

[Edit for clarity] As to HoT specifically, I’m satisfied with what they have revealed so far. I do think they should have mentioned that they were working on an expansion long before now, but I didn’t come away from the PAX announcement feeling like they didn’t reveal enough at this time.

But in general, their communication is abysmal. The Traits thread says hello.

No, they are not being to secretive. What they choose to share with us is up to them, not us.

With the track record of the this community, I am surprised they share anything at all. Mainly for the reasons the OP are listing. They share anything and they get beat up for it. No matter what they share it either isn’t enough or it is not good enough.

If you want to know everything about the expansion before it is even put out, where is the fun of discovering anything?

what can you say, it’s their MO… or should I say their M-MO!

Thank you, good night! I’ll be here all week!

Behellagh.1468:

If you are talking about precursor crafting Jaken then yes they told us it was back burnered early Oct 2013 only 4 months after the original announcement in July that year.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Is-precursor-crafting-going-to-happen-or-not/first#post2981770

And this was talked about in detail when Colin announced it.

Nah, that was just the most prominent thing in there, that got a lot of flag.

The point is: It was “only” on a red post.
As cool as these red posts are (and highly apreacieated), some official blog post on the matter is more effective.
A dev (doesn`t matter how high profile) making a comment on a thread can be the truth, but it won`t go out to the masses.

Prominent questions and issues like that need to be better communicated, simply because not everyone goes through the forum.
Infos are deluded into interviews, red posts and other snippets.

Neverless this fragmented information in combination with secrecy, the time it took for many of these features and other little tid bits are discouraging to a certain degree.

Jaken.6801:

I agree, to a certain extend.
They didn`t follow up on that and that backfired on them.

Are they too secretive? Hell yes. Mostly for PR reasons, which I start to hate, of course.

Sadly if you look around into interviews and some infos from the aftershow party, etc. then it pictures a very insecure Anet.

They announced this expansion as: Groundwork for the future
However isn`t that what the Living Story and Feature Packs are for? Building the groundwork for further development, so bigger things can easily fit in?

Now we hear that features of these “groundwork” feature packs will be retired (new trait systems. Of course it is a good move, I don`t argue that).

That systems shown are not finalized. Not in terms of balance or stability, but how they fit in in general.
It sounds like they build cool toys, but are unsure how to use them.

I may be exaggerating, but the secrecy and these behind the szenes “unsure” statements do not create security. More the opposite.

If they had any they would have given a release date. Would have shown something live.
They didn`t and that saddens me.

There are several big questions they could flat out say: No, won`t be in the pack, maybe later
Like the Pole Arms, who are apparently not part of the expansion, but the art team having fun.

This secrecy they try right now made sense before release. Now, with many people playing the game for over two years, voicing our opinions and concerns it does have no place.

I was burned a lot by the hype train of Anet`s PR. I don`t believe I am the only one there.

The expansion announcement for me was: “Yes, that is to be expected. People were asking for two years for this stuff.”
The only secret thing they got here is the story. The rest has been talked to dead and holding back that info is just annoying PR.

ArenaNet might be very (and mabye even too) secretive about their future plans but they have very good reason for that. In the past they raised the expectations to much and could not deliver.

As for the feature packs they are there to make balance changes and give us non story related quality of life updates like the wardrobe and the traits overhaul. This still means they are there to lay the groundwork for future updates of the game. I also think there are a lot fixes and changes happening witht the feature packs of which we don’t know anything and do not need to know anything.

What the Heart of Thorns expansion will do however is lay the groundwork for expanding on end game content. Masteries and specialisations seem to be ways to expaned on your character after it reaches it final level. I personally like that they add it with an expansion instead of just add it with a feature pack since now it feels more embedded in the story of the world instead of something without any background.

Your example of retiring the current traitsytem is not an example of ArenaNet abandoning feature packs it is an example of ArenaNet listening to their players. The biggest complain about the traits system was that for every alt you made you had to acquire all traits again making it a grind (something Anet does not want). My expectation is that the traitsystem overhaul will be nothing else than that acquiring traits will become acountbound like the masteries instead of soulbound like it is now.

These two things might do the same thing but on a different level and that makes that they add up to each other my guess is that half a year after Heart of Thorns is released we will see the a new feature pack to balance all the changes they made with the expansion and how players use them.

This leads me to your second point arenanet doubting itself about all the changes they are going to make. You are saying if a beta is neccessary your product is not good so you are saying that almost every multiplayer game released these days is not good. What I know of world of warcraft is that every expansion they released came after months of betatesting and allmost every time their subscriptions numbers went up so you are wrong it stating a beta is for losers. A beta is there to see if everything is indeed balanced as it should be and everything is working as it should be. This indeed means you are getting a beta of an allready existing game but you are getting a beta of the new features added to the existing game to be sure they work.

To be honest I wish they would have been more secretive. The amount of information they gave let too much space for speculations. Speculations always lead to flame wars.

Well in a way that means they are too secretive too. They either shouldn’t have said anything after “we are giving you an expansion” or should have given more information about the features than what we got now.

ThFH.6048:

ArenaNet might be very (and mabye even too) secretive about their future plans but they have very good reason for that. In the past they raised the expectations to much and could not deliver.

As for the feature packs they are there to make balance changes and give us non story related quality of life updates like the wardrobe and the traits overhaul. This still means they are there to lay the groundwork for future updates of the game. I also think there are a lot fixes and changes happening witht the feature packs of which we don’t know anything and do not need to know anything.

What the Heart of Thorns expansion will do however is lay the groundwork for expanding on end game content. Masteries and specialisations seem to be ways to expaned on your character after it reaches it final level. I personally like that they add it with an expansion instead of just add it with a feature pack since now it feels more embedded in the story of the world instead of something without any background.

Your example of retiring the current traitsytem is not an example of ArenaNet abandoning feature packs it is an example of ArenaNet listening to their players. The biggest complain about the traits system was that for every alt you made you had to acquire all traits again making it a grind (something Anet does not want). My expectation is that the traitsystem overhaul will be nothing else than that acquiring traits will become acountbound like the masteries instead of soulbound like it is now.

These two things might do the same thing but on a different level and that makes that they add up to each other my guess is that half a year after Heart of Thorns is released we will see the a new feature pack to balance all the changes they made with the expansion and how players use them.

This leads me to your second point arenanet doubting itself about all the changes they are going to make. You are saying if a beta is neccessary your product is not good so you are saying that almost every multiplayer game released these days is not good. What I know of world of warcraft is that every expansion they released came after months of betatesting and allmost every time their subscriptions numbers went up so you are wrong it stating a beta is for losers. A beta is there to see if everything is indeed balanced as it should be and everything is working as it should be. This indeed means you are getting a beta of an allready existing game but you are getting a beta of the new features added to the existing game to be sure they work.

A typical MMO does usually have several expansion packs by now.
Guild Wars 2 is not your typical MMO.
So far we were told that they were testing the waters with the Living Story and the Feature Packs.

These two big staples of the game so far overhauled the core game experience from release to something I like to call GW2 2.0.
It`s better, easier and much more fair to the players than it was before.

They have allready created and are creating the groundwork for the future with these systems.
They put out content and change the system.
Of course they never archieved the level of attention of a full expansion.

Subsequently saying that the Expansion itself is being seen as the groundwork for the future, while they are already doing it is questionable for me.
In other MMOs expansions serve exactly that function. Lifting the game to a new level.

GW2 did the same thing for two years now. We have the 2.0 experience. We are at a comfortable place now. The expansion should come down with a bang. Taking this foundation and run away with it.
I think calling it the groundwork is underselling the work they are allready doing. It tells me that they have no confidence in their work so far.
However I might be overanalyzing it.

beta
Never said beta is a bad thing. A beta is highly appreaciated.
However the last “betas” were mostly internal and we got the NPE out of it. They had good betas as well, like the ones before launch, but right now I hope they are more inclusive.
I would love to give feedback.

Traitsystem
Yeah, they listened to the players after making a mistake. It`s a good thing. Might have been a bad example. The thing is, that they could have fixed it with a feature pack.
They could have set the mastery system seperately as well.
It`s a good thing they combine it. They could have give an estimate though (we will release more info early next year, for example)

Its annoying to try and be patient but Anet has made it a point to not talk about things until they are ready to talk about.

be prepared to drown in information sometime REAL soon ;-)

Jaken.6801:

A typical MMO does usually have several expansion packs by now.
Guild Wars 2 is not your typical MMO.
So far we were told that they were testing the waters with the Living Story and the Feature Packs.

These two big staples of the game so far overhauled the core game experience from release to something I like to call GW2 2.0.
It`s better, easier and much more fair to the players than it was before.

They have allready created and are creating the groundwork for the future with these systems.
They put out content and change the system.
Of course they never archieved the level of attention of a full expansion.

Subsequently saying that the Expansion itself is being seen as the groundwork for the future, while they are already doing it is questionable for me.
In other MMOs expansions serve exactly that function. Lifting the game to a new level.

GW2 did the same thing for two years now. We have the 2.0 experience. We are at a comfortable place now. The expansion should come down with a bang. Taking this foundation and run away with it.
I think calling it the groundwork is underselling the work they are allready doing. It tells me that they have no confidence in their work so far.
However I might be overanalyzing it.

beta
Never said beta is a bad thing. A beta is highly appreaciated.
However the last “betas” were mostly internal and we got the NPE out of it. They had good betas as well, like the ones before launch, but right now I hope they are more inclusive.
I would love to give feedback.

Traitsystem
Yeah, they listened to the players after making a mistake. It`s a good thing. Might have been a bad example. The thing is, that they could have fixed it with a feature pack.
They could have set the mastery system seperately as well.
It`s a good thing they combine it. They could have give an estimate though (we will release more info early next year, for example)

Thanks for your reply personally I think this sounds more constructive than your earlier replies.

It is true many MMO’s are faster with releasing their expansion than GW2 is. Indeed we have been some kind of guineapigs for living story which became better in season 2 but still had some big flaws (biweekly releases?). For the feature pack I think their main purpose is a balance patch and backoffice maintenance and ‘trying’ to make some much wanted changes to the game making some things more GW1.

But I think the really important part of the feature packs was the backoffice maintenance of which we don’t know anything. This was the groundwork for the upcomming expansion making it possible to fit it on easily. Also I think that the core changes the feature pack brought with it will remain standing over the entire game both GW2 and Hearth of Thorns.

About Hearth of Thorns being the groundwork for the future I think you might indeed be overanalyzing but also I kind of agree with you. They should have been clearer about what they ment with groundwork in both explanations feature pack and expansion pack. For Hearth of Thorns I think they ment the groundwork for future expansions.

Mike O’Brien said they will not raise the levelcap and the tier of gear achievable so they have to come up with some other kind of endgame content in which a player can advance. This will be the masteries system what I understand form Colin Johanson is that almost all skills are tied to achieving things in the new areas opened up by the expansion. So if they will ever release a new expansion or livingstory season they can build on this masteries system to give players extra endgame content. E.g. if they will ever release the deep see dragon you can maybe get a masteries track in which you can swim in strong currents like in this release you can glide along winds flowing over the map.

I agree with you that using the term groundwork two times without any context can be very confusing and indeed can be interpreted as they are feeling insecure since they keep changing the ‘core’ game.

Sorry for the misunderstanding about Betas that was how I interpreted your posts it seems we are on the same page betas are good to get player feedback and testing. I did not know about the new player experience but have to agree it wasn’t good betatesting.

They seem to be overly secretive, but I don’t even think it’s intentional. It just seems to be a certain naivete about about what they know and they don’t realize we don’t. Almost half the reveal panel was them essentially repeating themselves and insisting things were simple to explain, without any real explanation, but I don’t think it was the usual PR runaround. It’s bad, though, when they let a few hanging threads (like how many Specializations there actually are) not get clarified right away (well, it got clarified fairly quickly for once, but on third party sites).

Some might say, that’s the community’s fault, they shouldn’t jump to conclusions. And maybe they shouldn’t, but that’s like saying starving people shouldn’t have eaten the banquet you put in front of them. In the end, the one who’s going to get hurt most by confusion and over-hype is Arena.net themselves. If everyone starts building this impossibly amazing expansion well before the details come out, then the details are going to disappoint. And when they disappoint, that misconception isn’t going to hurt the community much, because they can simply leave, but it will hurt Arena.net.

I don’t think anything is that bad right now, but it’s definitely something Arena.net really needs to keep an eye on. It’s one thing to keep details close to your chest until you’re ready, but misconceptions need to be cleared up as soon as possible.

It’s called “Marketing” and yes, it can seem pointless in retrospect.

Brother Grimm.5176:

It’s called “Marketing” and yes, it can seem pointless in retrospect.

It usually seems pointless because the ones complaining about it are usually the fringe or the ones who are not the target audience of the marketing (Yes just because you play gw2 doesn’t mean every form of marketing is direct at you).

Is Anet being too secretive?

Is a bear Catholic? Wait that’s not right …

They listed the major changes exclusive to the expansion. Colin has also stepped up and said Traitgate is redesigned and I hope that means across the whole game. Who knows, we may see it before the expansion.

STOP LAUGHING.

But to generate free buzz on all the MMO sites, rather than advertising sooner than later, we’ll get a dog and not mounts presentation that will be dragged out over months. Got to stoke the fires of the hype train (with the bodies of corrupted Sylvari). It’s not going to be as entertaining as the updates when WildStar was near release but if it’s anything like what we’ve seen with the two feature packs, it’ll generate more questions than it answers which at the very least will keep everyone talking about it.

And in the end, that’s the point.

have you seen how mad this forum has been at ANet for revealing precursor hunt two years too soon? can you imagine what they’d do with all these other features? hell, can you imagine if they started working on a new race before coming to the decision to can it?

better to say a few words and always be right than to say a lot of wrong things.

Think of it like a movie. If they release too many trailers too soon and spoil everything in the movie, people won’t be excited for it when it actually comes out. However, I do think there could be a little more interaction with the playerbase on the forums, especially in profession balance.

Marketing effectiveness is inversely proportional to the intelligence of the target audience

….take that as you will.

lordkrall.7241:

CrashTestAuto.9108:

The problem is that they don’t seem able to adapt to climate very well. Secrecy would have been brilliant, if they had customer trust. But they made some pretty big missteps, and trust gradually eroded. There was a point mid to late last year where this hit an absolute boiling point, and they only marginally did anything about it (we STILL don’t know when traits are being fixed, or what’s happening with SAB).

The reveal was awesome, and the secrecy added hugely to that. But so much damage was done in what must have been 9+ months worth of angering the community that I don’t think it was worth it.

Yes we do.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

Now that the HOT is out of the bag, we’re able to update this thread with more details. With the introduction of the new account based mastery system for end-game progression and growth in PvE, we’ll also be re-evaluating our other systems of character progression to ensure they match our over-all pillars and goals for Gw2.

In doing so: we’re going to be removing the current trait unlocking system currently on live and replacing it with a more simplified system that supports where skills-traits-specializations are going in the future. We’ll go into more details between now and the release of HOT on how skills, traits, and specializations will work in the new Gw2 world.

Thank you for all your passionate feedback on this topic – it not only helped our dev team lead to this decision, but has played a large role in helping us define how to build our exciting new account based mastery system for end-game progression in PvE as well.

I’m sorry, I might be missing something, but I don’t see an answer to when traits are being fixed there? It suggests “between now and HoT” but we don’t know when HoT is coming.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

I’m sorry, I might be missing something, but I don’t see an answer to when traits are being fixed there? It suggests “between now and HoT” but we don’t know when HoT is coming.

It will be released WITH HoT.
So we know exactly when it will happen. At launch of HoT.

True, we do not know when HoT is released, but we now know that it will happen.