I think that the reason they chose to design it this way is at least in part to focus on the big panels from hell and make those as flashy as they could because they felt those were more important.
If I were in their place, I'd have deemphasized panels from hell and made them smaller affairs. Still with streaming and such, but not as much of the extra pomp and circumstance. I would have focused more on smaller communcation in between patches. I don't think I'd have insisted on a presence in the forums, but I would have would have, when information was as reliable as possilble, given out some info on what aspects of the game we were definitely changing and which ones we were definitely keeping as is. I also would have arranged for posts going into the lore of the Forgotten Realms. Races, places, classes, talking about some of the factions or weird things we might meet in the game. Maybe even a bit of info about things like history or events from the prior games. Stuff that people who care about the setting or series would be interested in, as well as people who are new to the setting and want to know more going in. Like, I'm sure a lot of casual D&D fans have no idea what the Githyanki are and would have loved to learn more about them.
Basically, I wouldn't have increased direct communication a whole lot, but I'd have increased it, and kept a steady trickle of information about the setting going out that would hopefully create an illusion of more communication than there really was.
