Is anyone really shocked that it's delayed? This is a standard thing with Komi lol. All for a x-mas event.....
There is nothing shocking about delays in game releases in general. Delays are common for all devs. Even the most regular ones like Arcgames have delays, even triple-A games are regularly delayed. The concerning part is that what the dev estimated to take 2 months is taking over 4... now that isn't a good sign for the game... though nor is 2+ years without an update.
The Christmas event isn't the problem. Do you believe that if there was no Christmas update that the dev would be releasing the main update by now or soon? Not likely. Given how he miscalculated the Christmas update chances are he miscalculated the time for the main update even more. He said by end of last year or beginning of this year, but that is unlikely by the looks of things.
If the Christmas update gets released it will be possibe to see that the dev is actually doing something, and that there is still some hope for the game. This would be better than being told to wait for 1.3 indefinitely especially given that people already waited for over 2 years for it.
And the longer we're made to wait, the higher the expectations will rise. It'll become more and more difficult for Komi to meet those expectations the longer they continue to tweak and add, instead of establishing a firm event cutoff.
That's not really true... after more than 2 years the expectations are that he release something, and that he wasn't just milking all this time. I don't know how blissfully ignorant a person would have to be to think that if an update is taking far more than any reasonable time frame it's simply because it's just going to be so much better. Obviously this is happening because there is a problem, and problems rarely make for better games.