Oh man! That's a lot of time. I think it is both good and bad at the same time. Good being - the dev need not rush his novel and take his time in presenting it the way he wanted; this brings the best results from him. Bad being - the possibility that the current followers might not be patient enough to wait such a long time; or simply even, speaking from experience, the tendency of the producer (developer in this context) losing passion for the project due to it being so lengthy, especially in case of Indie developers. I hope this won't be the case with DPC if the timeline you speculated is true. Thanks for the informative reply.
I don't see this being much of an issue, at least not to people who would try out the novel after it is finished. Although this might affect the current followers as I've said before. But as you said, even that can be overcome by maintaining the standards of the game to people's expectations, which gets harder and harder as it progresses. What exactly do you mean by two independent products? There are already seasons facilitating a better organization of the game, if that's what you meant.