Best thing about this is that it FINALLY proves many of us right that the previous interview mentioning this was widely mistranslated on Reddit. We had all of this info months ago already but the first translation posted was taken at face value despite many errors. The number of arguments on this board between people citing the mistranslation as evidence and those of us pointing out the error...

When he says that players will still have their zodiac if they want to use it, I think he is referring to the new weapon using 'zodiac' as a generic term for the evolving weapon. Players will have the choice to develop the new weapon if they want to or otherwise use one of the many other, more easily obtained, weapons. At the end of the day the current relics were, for the most part, about glamour. The customisable stats may allow for a more optimal build but overall the difference between relics and other weapons of the same iLvl is negligible. I imagine it will be the same with the new one.