I respectfully disagree that it's a good expenditure of funds, or good value for marketing.
They need to generate positive hype for the game; hosting their event in a castle won't achieve that, not when they were determined already to put on a flashy panel show of some sort, which would be distributed and consumed digitally regardless of its actual venue, and not when many, many folks are already question whether Larian has bitten off more than they can chew, are in over their head, and are committing repeated mistakes of personal hubris along the way at every turn. A flashy publicity stunt for a game patch that is long overdue, and the end of a long string of broken words and statements and other misleading marketing, does not make them look professional or like they are doing anything other than flailing about hopefully.
Edit: Let me put it another way... The people who are already on board and hyped for the game are not the ones they need to reach or sell to. The patch itself will do that, as illustrated by the first half dozen comments in this thread. The people who are not interested and who haven't yet bought in on the game are not going to be won over by anything other than the actual content of the patch itself. The people who want to love the game, and who need to be given an infusion of hope and hype after the drought and disappointment are the ones that they need their update campaigning to appeal to the most - I'm in that group, and this drives me away, rather than draws me in.
I fully see your point of view, but I still believe you're missing the point of such an event. Sure, it will give us that stalk forums some long awaited news, but we would have settled for patch notes. But the big crowd out there are not the forum lurkers, the vocal fans or the 600+ hours in EA - It's the people who never seen or played the game. The NEW customers they want to draw in and get hyped for the game. The ones that just read the occasional article on gamespot or other media. And if you read previews, news and other article from gaming media, the reporting is overwhelmingly positive around BG3. Everytime they do an event, more positive article comes out of it. Some of them even highlighting Larian's (awful) homebrew of things.
