Okay so this is basically all speculation:
- whatever he said I really expect 1200 chapters, I suppose that's 120 volumes. Or either one.
- that should be a lot of time, except we just had act 3 of Wano last about 70 chapters. All that fucking time mostly just going through motions. Doesn't feel too efficient to say the least.
- I think the biggest potential obstacles to coming close to three years are hard plot points. Some of Wano really fucking sucked and it was bizarre to see so many things hammered in without reasoning or follow through. Like seriously, take out the numbers and you'd lose nothing. I think he wouldn't back off from some beats and the stories get bloated by giving them adequate space. Page One had no business staying around after the rooftop but Oda really wanted Big Mom to knock him out as a gag. Ulti never had to exist. Kanjuro being around so long was dumb but Oda really planned on a big fire... that Raizo existed to snuff. Asura Doji also needed to be a sacrifice so hey, more of the same even if the resolution was a strong character dying to the second to last attack from that weaker character defeated volumes ago. Then in total it was like Zunesha took up a whole chapter and that only amounted to telling us Luffy is Joyboy, even though it was clear from several other angles. Shit like that you know?
- it's hard to know when he checked out because of the padding. But I actually feel like it was around 998. When he was like "fuck." He laid out so much and had those certain plots he needed to do, but despite some cool shit the story just soent weird amounts of time on the wrong things. Like he got lost on the way to closing plots one by one. He made 999 and 1000 what he needed them to be, but there was always some shitty side plot being pulled up that didn't end well. 1004... how did Hiyori just show up without anyone knowing for such long time? She's got skills Greenbull should be learning