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The Facts. The Pre-Order Situation, Download Activation Timing and Background


Madmatt

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Okay, this is the announcement that many of you have been waiting on and its the announcement that I wasn't able to write before because I simply didn't have all the answers to give. Now I do.

First the good news. The Download file for Theatre of War is currently being prepared for its release to all Pre-Order customers. That prep time will extend into tomorrow though but as soon as the file is ready, you will be receiving your "Ready To Download Email Notifications".

The exact moment that will occur still depends on many factors, chiefly how fast I can get the file uploaded. We have done extensive tests with our filehost and they are confident that they can deliver exceptional speed for the amount of download requests we are expecting.

I realize that tomorrow is the 19th, the official release date, and I realize that we had hoped to have the download ready before the 19th, but the fact of the matter is that due to a last minute issue with the Mission Editor that was detected this past weekend, we have been working feverishly to get a fix in place and update the download file. This fix took longer, MUCH longer than anticipated to implement, test and confirm, but its now done, and that's why the file is being (finally) prepared for you.

There was an expectation here on the forum that the downloads would have been ready much sooner that we had ever planned to have them. While we NEVER stated an exact time, we had pretty much always intended to be not more than 2 days earlier.

We obviously missed that window as well, and I do apologize for that. MY focus all this week was getting the Mission Editor issue cleared up and it has literally absorbed every waking moment of my week.

This has not been some dark conspiracy, we are not sitting here laughing that your faith and money was misplaced somehow and we certainly aren't sipping martini's on a beach at your expense. Delivering a quality product to you was my ONLY intent, and if that means I missed a due date, then so be it. I will accept your anger with no excuses.

Tomorrow, April 19th is STILL the official release date as well and sometime before the end of the day (probably right before midnight EST) we will switch over from pre-orders, to normal orders. That means the 10 dollar off deal will end, and people will then be able to choose a download option, a mail option or both. Please understand that the RELEASE DATE is not the MAILING DATE. The DVD's will still not be shipping until they are physically on-hand at the warehouse and I am not sure when that date will be. Martin could probably shed more light on that.

I am truly sorry that the pre-order download window is not going to be longer than about half a day, but this is how it turned out.

Some of you may be wondering about the Mission Editor issue I found and whether it will be on the DVD version or not. Yes, it might be, but we will have a 0-Day patch ready for you to apply well before anyone actually gets their DVD in the mail. You will just need to install the game as normal then run the special patch. In fact, not all people would even ever encounter the issue but we are still going to play it safe and make the patch available to everyone. The patch itself will be small (should be less than 1 meg) and will be widely available.

In addition to the small patch, we are also going to be working on a free "mission pack" with a undetermined number of extra missions for you. I don't have the exact timing of this pack just yet, but if I can get it out to you before the DVD's arrive, I will. That's my plan at least. Sure, you can make your own missions with the Editor, but why go through all that work when i will do it for you first? ;)

Some of you may be wondering why we didn't announce this delay earlier, well we wanted to wait until we knew EXACTLY what was going on before we did. We kept hoping that we could make our release as scheduled but once that became obvious that we would miss it (which was yesterday, we had planned to open downloads on Tuesday) we thought we could get the fix in by today, and then again it took longer to get done. I just didn't want to tell you something, only to have another unexpected event pop up and screw it all up again.

Okay, so that's where this all stands. You WILL get your email notification tomorrow, you WILL get to download before the game is released and the game WILL get released late tomorrow, but still on the 19th.

This will not please everyone, but it is the truth.

I thank you for your continued patience and faith in us.

Madmatt

[ April 18, 2007, 07:44 PM: Message edited by: Madmatt ]

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Thank you for the update, Matt.

Things happen, such is life. Given the challenging circumstances, I'm sure Battlefront has done the best they can to resolve the issues as quickly as possble. I'm certain most reasonable people appreciate this fact. Thanks again for your hard work and feverish efforts. Looking forward to play the game soon!

Best,

flintlock

[ April 18, 2007, 09:32 PM: Message edited by: flintlock ]

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Madmatt,

I have always appreciated your honest and open approach when dealing with us mouth-breathers. As much as I may gripe about release dates and other nonsense I respect your ethics on releasing only a finished product.

That being said....Git yer arse back to work!!!! :mad:

BTW, when can I pre-order CM:SF? :D

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