A few things.
First, it’s a change that’s been discussed for a long time. CCP keeps hearing how this one little change will make everything better, and they’ve resisted making that change. So now they’ve decided to make that change. If nothing else, the change demonstrates that CCP really does want to try to address the problems in their game, and that they’re willing to make changes just to try to get a better handle on what those problems really are.
Because problems aren’t always immediately apparent. Often, a ‘problem’ is actually just a symptom, and addressing the symptom just means the real problem goes unchecked, and gets worse over time. So them trying to get a clear handle on things is good. Them wanting to make a change in order to do that—one that can be just as easily reversed, mind you—is also good.
That’s the second thing: Reversability is a big factor in the initial tests they need to do: that it can be easily reversed. Until they know what the hell they’re doing, you don’t want them doing anything they can’t undo. Turning off local? They can turn that back on. Removing all supercapitals from the game? Not really so easy to reverse, especially when you factor in the story factor they will build around whatever change they make.
Third, it lets them start to collect data on more things than just PCU. Making this change doesn’t just change how many people are logged in. It changes what they’re doing. And CCP can see those changes. So they can collect the data on ‘ok, so with imperfect intelligence, X happens’ and then try to figure out which parts of X are about Local actually being ‘delayed’, and which parts are just about how players perceive things to be going.
- Example: More kills over this past weekend. Is that because more people ratting and mining got caught? Or is it because more people expected to catch people… so there were more roaming gangs, and they hit one another? Those are two different effects, and two different sets of behavior, and knowing which you’re dealing with can produce different responses, depending on what you want to encourage or discourage.
Fourth: It lets CCP shake up the bots. I mean, let’s face it, it definitely did that. No way around that, the bots losing local made the script writers change how they do things. CCP can watch people they suspect are bots. They can see how their inputs have changed in response to this. More, if they undo the Blackout, they can watch how/if those inputs change again, and see if there’s ways they maybe make it more difficult for the bots to compensate for things like this.
That’s four benefits, right off the top of my head. Now, I know you’re probably thinking ‘I mean, how does this make my immediate gameplay better?’ and all I can tell you is: maybe it doesn’t. But in the long run, you’re better served by CCP doing this, and using the information they get, than you are by them not doing this, and everything just continuing to coagulate around you until all of null is a single, unyielding gestalt.