New tech stuff and artstyles are one thing, but not all will gain momentum and more important, if you are good at what you do, "oldstyle" will still have impact. For instance, "Girls und Panzer" character artstyle is dated in the eyes of many, but it was and is a hit series. And no matter that the style is "dated" it looks good!
As for your prediction how long L&P has to complete AWAM, I agree with you and it is the reason I have become so critical of him. One example, I am a newbie at DAZ. I have a couple of bought things and freebies, use mainly light presets to kitbash RPG character portraits together and while I want to get better with the program, at the moment it is ok for me. I just have internal graphics, but a good CPU and even then a HD pic, where I do not go overboard with Background clutter or too many persons in it, takes just about 11-12 minutes!
L&P has an average render output of under 6 pics/day and falling! He has years of DAZ experience on me, a frakload of DAZ stuff and presets and a PC far better suited for rendering than mine. Even accounting for the often more complicated, so a bit slower, rendering of the scenes this is an extremly low number in comparison with the starting point. The less complex renders of e.g. one person somewhere, he should be able to batch at least 3 per hour, not 4-5 in a day!
I heard more than once from supporters who know L&P that works his ass off for AWAM, so something is not right here. Either he is lying about what he does or he has one of the worst workflow organisation skill I ever came across.