This is why I’ve been pressing the issue of pre-launch vs. post-launch updates. While I hope that they might still answer that question, I don’t really expect them to.
Historically, the public beta has followed this same pattern: the upcoming changes are pushed to the TestLive environment, a relatively small number of players make an effort to test it and report the bugs, a handful of “low-hanging fruit” bugs get fixed before the live release and the rest are marked as “known issues” in the patch notes.
Also historically, this has led to public beta testers being disillusioned and frustrated, because they made an effort to help improve the game and their efforts didn’t result in a less buggy release.
I keep praising @Kikigirl for her testing efforts, but I guess I never really explained that it’s not just because of the diligence with which she reported bugs, but also for giving Funcom yet another chance to prove that they can change.
If there aren’t, there’s nothing we can do about it 
Even the communication usually follows a well-established pattern 
Whenever a new community manager joins the team, they are initially quite active on the forums, which gives the players here some hope that the communication is improving. Eventually, their participation tapers off until they are only posting very occasionally.
It’s too early to say whether Caroll will follow the same pattern, or break it.
That said, credit where credit is due: Caroll didn’t only change the quantity of communication, she also changed the quality. She has actually gathered feedback from the community and come back with answers, on more than one occasion. Also, Dennis has been more active than usual, and has even attempted to open a serious dialog with the PVP community on the topic of spear combat. (I’ll leave it up to the reader to form their own conclusions about how well the PVP community took him up on that.)
We all want that. And I feel like Funcom made a step towards instituting some changes, and the players reacted by giving them the benefit of the doubt and stepping up to help and giving them a chance to prove they can change.
The update hasn’t hit live yet. Until it does, we won’t really have any measurable evidence of that change.
I would caution against setting expectations too high. If they don’t fix all the high-severity bugs before the launch, but they do fix at least one, that is incremental improvement. We might not think it’s “enough”, but if they make small improvements, they might eventually reach our goal, or as close to it as they can.
On the other hand, if all their attempts at improving don’t produce any tangible results, well, that will speak for itself, too. Just like the total absence of communication on the issue of thrall decay snafu speaks volumes.