Golden Girl

You don't need that to explain how the 20-50 content would have unfolded

Feel free to outline how the 20-50 content would have progressed in the same style as the 1-20 content

There's no new Incarnate Trial in I24, as there's kind of a story break now that Tyrant and the loyalists have been routed - we've run out of loyalist AVs to fight

That's because it is

There doesn't have to be an Incarnate link for Lore pets

Phantoms and Robotic Drones aren't even a real faction

All the major story reveals about Tyrant and the loyalists except the "truce" with the Hamidon were put into the 1-20 GR content for a reason

Why? They're pre-war zones, with pre-war content - they let players experience life from inside the evil empire before its destruction.

Reduced? They're not removing the GR zones

There are Incarnate CoT in DA

Plus, plenty of Lore pet types don't have Incarnate versions - like Nemesis, Longbow or Cimerorans.

It was where the Battalion were first mentioned as a force that the Rikti had defeated.
The original intent was that the Battalion was going to be an enemy group so powerful that the new IO system was going to be required to defeat them - that changed when NCSoft bought the game and backed a dumper truck full of cash up outside the studio and asked the devs what they wanted to do with it.
The original Battalion plan was put on hold, and a huge transformation of the whole game was started instead, which eventually gave us an endgame system - and the Battalion idea was then repurposed to be a threat so dangerous that Incarnate powers would be needed to defeat them.

You're totally misreading the intention of the Praetorian storyline and what it was designed to do

A teaser image has already shown Marauder in Atlas park - what his exact role is post-war remains to be seen

Are we really not going to escape the Agony Hall future?

My guess would be yes, as the post Striga story-telling style is based around the story of each zone, rather than just using it as a backdrop for mission doors, so the old KR and Brickstown content wouldn't fit with that style, or with the newer lore.

I think that there will be some geometry changes, even if it's just the trees.

It'll just be the level range.

This will be more like the Praetorian zone events, which are more dynamic.
The 2 new ones are likely to build on newer players' expectations following the Giant Shivan mini-event in the tutorial.

It's not been delayed - they said earlier this year that Battalion shows up in I25.

They mentioned a while back that they'd been doing some vague planning as far ahead as I32 - although they didn't say what it was for.
But with the Cominh Storm being a major story arc, it's likely that they'll have planned out the key plot points and events of it well in advance, like they did with the Praetorian war storyline.

Issue 24

The description of the new Incarnate arc sounds a bit greater good-ish

As you're a Tank, I assume you had it set to -1?

It's like a story hater's nightmare - there's even bonus Shining Stars and Praetorian Penny content to add to the horror

If you look closely at the pictures, you'll see that the 2 aren't identical, and they both look a bit smaller than the actual Avatar on the Underground Trial, so I think there could be multiple Avatars, or these slightly smaller ones are another troop type.

There could be new maps for it - it was mentioned on one of the coffee talks that they were looking at adding the sumemr event gladiator map in I24 or I25.

And with the current pacing of the Issues, it looks like it's timed to have an overview up around the time of the end of the world

Issue 25 is when we get to meet Battalion

Knowing what's coming in an Issue is not the same as playing through it

I'm wondering if it's part of a larger plan to make the Praetorian Incarnate content "historical", and have it replaced in the timeline by the Battalion Incarnate content.
Something similar seems to be happening with the RWZ - the new Brickstown and St. Martial content covers the level range of the RWZ, which makes it less of a "required" leveling zone, which could help to set it aside as a "historical" zone covering the events of the 2nd Rikti invasion, but not as an actual current storyline zone anymore.

More info before the world ends

The most fun will be had seeing how they handle the transition to post-war content ar level 30 when the war doesn't start until 50

That could be possible, as the new Praetorian content on Primal Earth is around the range Praetorians are starting to run out of content on their own world.
The thing I'm interested to see is how they'd handle the transition from First Ward/Night Ward, where the evil empire is still in power, to the new 30-50 content on Primal Earth where the loyalists have already been defeated - I think that it's going to be very hard to make a smooth transition story-wise.
For example, Praetorian Vanessa is the final FW contact, but if you can head straight to Brickstown after doing her arc, if there were any Praetorian Carnies there they'd have Desdemona as their leader.