It's more like a nod to continuing players than a drastic alteration to the core experience. A nice little touch.

If anything big does happen, it'll be in the shift from 2.0 to 3.0. From what I understand, 2.0's purpose was to win back the gamers (which I'd say it succeeded at, considering we now have 8 times the subs they were originally expecting), while 3.0 would realize the game's true vision and pick up from 1.0 to an extent. The stereotypical "Chosen One vs Empire" plot was probably chosen for being completely no-risk, but the recent stuff with Midgardsormr might be leading to a deconstruction of the concept... *shrug* One can dream.