Guys, there is a difference between being in development limbo and being delayed. Also releasing too early is a problem; it is true what archie said, just remember WW2OL.
Blizzard always (used to at least) waited till the game was perfect before releasing as an example and look how successful they have been.
The point is that its like cooking, you cant overcook it or under cook it, it has to be just right. The only thing we are discussing here is if there is actually anyone in the kitchen to begin with.
I reject your basic premise.
I don't believe this is a team that is converging in on a release and they just need a little more time to put the final polish on and make it perfect.
They are not refining, they are floundering. They are starting completely over again with an entirely new engine. Because someone obviously didn't do the most basic technological due diligence before vectoring their entire flagship product down that path.
I was shocked when I read they were going to use the UR4 engine. UR4 is a powerful engine, but not optimized for the type of game Warbirds is. Any amateur game programmer probably knows there is a whole host of potential problems. I think Unreal limits their physics something like 12km from origin due to floating-point imprecision causing movement jitters and collision test failure past that. They have a world origin shifting capability, but last time I saw that didn't support multi-player. It just wasn't designed for large scale terrain (hundreds of km) open worlds.
Regardless, it should have been obvious that was a high risk decision (if you did like 30 min of Googling) and there should have been careful prototyping to prove out that engine compatibility with their requirements.
I assumed someone had done that. I was mildly intrigued and interested to see how they were going to pull it off. I assumed they had come up with a clever workaround or was prototyping an advanced implementation from Epic. It turns out, no, someone just had their heads up their wazoo.
Everything I've seen so far, from the failure to choose the proper engine, to that embarrassingly bad rivet-plane, suggests to me the delay isn't because these guys aren't perfectionists. It suggests they are clueless dolts who are in way over their head.
If I'm wrong, I'll eat crow and tilt them a beer. But to do that, they will need to release something impressive. My guess is Oct 2019 turned to Feb 2020 and that will turn to Summer 2020 and that will turn to Winter 2020, etc, etc. So, I'm feeling pretty safe at the moment. And they still haven't even had the basic courtesy to give their players on the WB BBS an update letting them know the situation and the delay. Maybe they are just too embarrassed. They should be.
