The Artist team is very big. (Cherub <3 ~ )
The developer team is very small. (They are looking for developers, Nick has moved to another venture).
Instead of the Artist team sitting around, twiddling their thumbs while the dev team tries to accomplish and roll out large portions of game code, they are deciding to.. y'know. Actually do their job, hiss.
Artists need not know coding mechanics. They only need to know design software to work armor models into new fashions.
Just because they are doing an outstanding job with keeping to their schedule does not mean that:
A.) OOO is milking the community (these things do not give bonuses and merely look good, and are optional to buy)
B.) The developer team is not working on content (The gunner update is largely finished and has been for some time, but apparently it needs work to make sure everything functions properly.
The wait will be worth it