Delivering bad news the day before Thanksgiving was an age-old tradition well ahead of doing so during an Apple press conference. (Seriously, why does that work?) Unfortunately for fans of the real-time strategy genre, the news that Trion Worlds buried last Wednesday, and has made more public now, is not good. End of Nations, the MMORTS we’ve seen, played and had as a topic of interview, has seen its Open Beta testing phase postponed “until further notice.” Closed Beta was completed in early October.
The reason for the postponement was due to the lengthy Closed Beta process identifying “several key areas of the game which need polish and improvement.” That’s what it’s designed to do, so no shock there. What’s disconcerting isn’t the delay in beta progress but the follow-up email that was delivered to early adopters.
According to the email, Closed Beta customers will be receiving refunds. Hopefully the refunds are optional, a gesture of goodwill for an unexpected lengthy delay. Unfortunately, the case may be much more dire, an axing of development.
Speculate away, but I certainly hope that isn’t the case. Trion has been on the up and up, treating customers as the lifeblood of its existence, so I await the follow-up news on Petroglyph with baited breath.
Whichever way the cookie crumbles, Lore Hound will have more as it comes.