IIRC the exact moment they stopped giving patch notes early was when some spreadsheeters did their spreadsheet thing on WAR 4.2 changes (the ones that changed IR to be 'press for 5 free FCs') and decided that, since it was going to change to a 90s CD it'd be misaligned from Trick/2min stuff. Turns out, it being guaranteed crit/dhit was a lot bigger of a buff to the damage WAR dealt than 'it lines up with raidbuffs every time'

Problem with the media tour thing is, if we get the info about say, WHM SB lilies and we go 'these are bloody terrible', chances are by the time the majority of the playerbase get to know (ie, the embargo is up) then it's too late to do anything to fully fix or replace the bad design, only tweak numbers stuff. And the majority of the influencers are some combination of 'dont play healer', 'play healer occasionally but not as main' or 'dont want to anger daddy SE and lose media tour privileges' so stuff slips through