Hello there, and welcome to Elyria!

The best way to get involved right now is by playing the Dance of Discords- it's like the Game of Thrones except everything is made up and points don't matter. You can start with the official Discord. From there, you can choose a server, then choose a kingdom, then choose a duchy, then choose a county, and then you get to choose a barony. By this point you've probably joined half a dozen extra discords for guilds and what not, none of which will be very active except for the occasional obnoxious @everyone ping.

This is how we spend our time.

Welcome to the community!
To answer your first question, no nothing has been released. We may soon be getting some more info on the ETA for Elyria mud.
Second question gets a bit harder. Everything is theory at this point. I would suggest gathering info on the game and making friends as Mickdude2 has suggested.
Some places to start:
-Q&A on CoE yourtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa7jRzCTpW2NCh4FK11y9jQ/feed
-the site is also loaded with DJs: https://chroniclesofelyria.com/blog

Hope you find something inspiring!

Short sweet answer:

Read all the Developer and Design Journals. Then proceed to whatch all the QAs that Falendor Kindly linked above.