I don't think it's favoritism.... I think it's one of two things:
1. They're doing it to distract people and buy a little more time for whatever they're working on
or
2. They're doing it to hold extraordinary players/guilds up in the spotlight and to... well, distract everybody from no new "big" content. (Even though I think the potions were an okay update, I can understand why people might think that they're just stalling
)