You are remembering wrong. They made no such estimate.
They have said several times that they are looking into doing this with the new UI. Start weeping console players.
Not like PC users can't already do it...
Not in this game it isn't. Zoning is no faster on SSD than it is on a regular mechanical SATA drive. That's what happens when you use shitty low quality textures. Remember these zones were made to load mainly into what small DRAM/RAM a PS2 has available. If your PC can't pull those textures from a mechanical drive in a hot second, you've got bigger things to worry about.