Ping and Status are very useful console commands, let's you see true pings even if they have it masked. Status let's people view information about all the players, ex: Steam ID.
Previously there were non steam clients that allowed them to disable it so it was more of a hassle for us to look up their steam IDs, now they can no longer do that.

By the look of the updates, this is an important update for server hosts. Of course everyone knows that when Valve fixes something, they break something too.