I was talking to an old, still in friend the other day and he mentioned this new understanding of Gog and Magog, although he didnt explain it to me. So whether he personally understood, or cared about it is another story.
Its simply classic WT tactics to distract the average JW for a bit longer, another carrot to dangle- a reason to talk about how the organisation is moving along and obviously signifies how close the end must be.
Re-introduce a mysterious concept from the bible that is shrouded in obscurity, that may or may not point to the end times and the apocolypse, or it may just be a story that applied to a localised area that has long since occured. or, because it is in Revelation, may be an analogy.
From the time of Josephus until now, no one really knows who it applies to, and probably because of that, it has been applied to so many different places and people.