I believe someone got an error once in which Visual C++ was named.

R:TW was in development for 4 or 5 years. It had 15 programmers, 20 artists, 5 designers and a quite a few more people working on it.

Modders try to convert it and even add more features with the idea of finishing it within a year in their free time with usually 1 to 3 dedicated teammembers.

M2:TW will probably have cost even more manpower and total time. All the improved eyecandy and features will be the doom of even more hopefull modders as they will start to realize that the newest games are too much to chew for a mod, especially without proper documentation and tools.