State of the Mod Address, Fall 2013: We're Almost There

[Kull]

At the risk of universal opprobrium, I'll pose an old question: when's this damn thing gonna be released? I'm not asking for an exact date, I'm asking for a rough estimate. If the EB Twitter is any indication, most of the major bugs have been ironed out and the game is almost finished. Assuming that the current rate of development continues, when can we expect a release? In a month? Sometime in summer?

Don't take this as ingratitude. For the modders that have devoted months and years of their life to making EBII happen, I thank you from the depths of my admittedly shallow heart. I appreciate your sacrifice and dedication, and I'm not trying to be impatient. I just want to know if I should get excited yet. I understand if you can't give a straight answer to the question. But given the vague parameters, I believe you should be able to.

Here's the thing. We have ironed out the horrific bugs that caused the game to CTD and resolved others that severely hampered playability. What we are still working on are the MULTITUDE of factors that combine to make the game interesting - or not. Things like recruitment, the economy, AI faction survivability, and a host of related, complex interactions, could not be tested and addressed until the worst of the stability issues had been resolved. The good news is, we are there. The bad news is, those are major issues, and none of them are subject to quick fixes.

When the original announcement was made last fall, there was a feeling that the mod had been in process for far too long, and it was better to release an alpha than to just keep moseying along forever. But since then we have made quantum leaps in many areas, and have a deeper team working in a larger number of areas. That has allowed us to "raise the bar". Rather than dropping a half finished, barely playable mod on those who've long awaited it, the goal is to deliver a product that is historically rich in detail AND interesting and exciting to play.

We are also painfully aware of the Total War community's reaction to the playability issues affecting R2TW. For us to do the same thing to our fans? That would be unconscionable. So when will it be released? Hard to say. This year absolutely. In the next few months, probably not. There truly are too many variables at play to say any more than that. You can be confident however, that a large team is working every single day to get this done. It will be worth the wait.