At this point you’re arguing semantics for no reason at all. The ladder comment was lawyer talk by Rod Fergusson. He distracted the gullible with “shortly after” making them believe there was a reliable time frame given, when in fact there wasn’t. He can always point to “once everything settles down” part of his sentence, to which “shortly after” is contingent on and secondary to, thus giving Blizzard leeway to delay the release if necessary. Technically his post wasn’t wrong, just slightly misleading at worst. It maybe would’ve been clearer if he wrote “once everything settles down it will come shortly after”, even though this means the same thing.
Obviously they didn’t expect the disastrous launch, which changed the scope of the time frame entirely. In your shower analogy it would be the same as the shower not working, and therefore pushing the deadline beyond the initial 48h window. You won’t be doing anything until you take that shower, just as they won’t be doing anything before getting the servers fixed.
D2R has been riddled with problems ever since release, and I for one didn’t expect ladder to come in 2021 after that launch. I suspect their plan was always to roll out ladder with a new patch and had to postpone both as a result. I understand the patience of many players is running thin and Blizzard can’t delay it forever, but since I don’t think they’re merely rolling their thumbs I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. In hindsight it was a huge mistake to release D2R when they did, as painfully demonstrated. They have received their fair share of deserved criticism for it. Hopefully they learned from it and won’t repeat the same mistakes with ladder launch. So if they are taking their time because of this then I don’t mind it as much. Their communication is horrible as always though.