Here's my take:

Right now, Verge is a good idea. So if they execute it can be useful. It's a fast 30 second blocks with privacy that is suppose to work seamlessly in the wallet.

A lot people love XMR and it has much better tech. But sometimes people don't need NSA level privacy. They just want to buy something without their wife seeing it on the credit card. A fast, private coin would be useful.

The other thing is that XVG has a small development team that doesn't communicate much. Someone put a Wraith protocol timer up online but it wasn't the dev team. So people thought the developers missed a deadline but they never did.

They get criticized for not responding to rumors. Fair enough. They generally respond in their chat channels rather then make official statements. This has created a lot of mystery and crazy levels of anticipation.

It may just be a genius PR move because everyone is talking about Verge. Either saying it will be amazing when released or saying its never going to get released and its a scam. If 75% of people call it a scam and it gets released, XVG will fly. But I do think there will be a sell the news drop as well.