The main reason? As you probably know, we did some closed focus testing with several groups of players last month, in preparation for the upcoming general Player Preview. Before we put the Preview in front of the toughest audience in the world, AC players, we wanted to put the game in front of, well, some of the toughest audience in the world, just to make sure we had the game we thought we had. This seemed only prudent, and we made sure we had players from a wide range of servers, including Darktide.

The upshot is: Boy, are we glad we did that. It was interesting, if your definition of 'interesting' is having your flaws pointed out in graphic detail. The feedback we got from the players was great, very detailed and specific and delivered with tough love. What they told us is that we had some changes to make. And we took that feedback to heart and have started to make some of those changes, but it is going to take some time.

Don't get the idea I'm blaming the delay on the players; if anything, we should have caught some of the issues they noted earlier. As we all know, however, we can all get too close to our babies; that's why you have testing. The testers have improved Throne of Destiny with their comments and we're indebted to them. Besides, I don't know the development team that doesn't want more time to optimize code.