Look this is great and yes they did a lot of work! Veterans will have to understand that this update is definitely geared to new players or returning players that stopped playing the game shortly after launch. I think now that they have done this they can focus on end game content for veterans just at the moment this was the bigger focus. To be honest though more players = more reason to allocate resources to make more content so all and all this will be very good. Just sorry about veterans that feel like they have been left out.
I think until the recent Open Beta it was also not that clear how much of a performance improvement the new client will be. During an informal talk they mention solving 30k bugs for Aeternum release, they committed A LOT on this actually. The optimization will benefit to everyone new/returning/veteran players. Also, I don't have any insight on this, but i think there is a good chance that the content cadence increase a lot now.
