Well, it`s confirmed, it will be delayed.
Mainly because of the economy going downwards lately, and because they want to be extra sure that it will be as little errors/misstake with the game as possible before release.

If it hadn`t been for you americans stupid wars that sends the world economy to hell we all would play AoC soon, damn you

Quote from The Very End :

... because they want to be extra sure that it will be as little errors/misstake with the game as possible before release.

Well, I suppose there is a first time for everything...a game that is almost bug free at release? Unheard of!!!

Quote from Bladerunner :

Well, I suppose there is a first time for everything...a game that is almost bug free at release? Unheard of!!!

This. If there isn't a patch within the first month I'll donate £100 to the RNLI.

Quote from P5YcHoM4N :

This. If there isn't a patch within the first month I'll donate £100 to the RNLI.

Careful..it just MIGHT be like TDU....wait OVER 6 MONTHS for a patch that only fixes a few minor bugs, and then forget about it and develop another game to get even more money out of you!

It's an MMO. Name me a single MMO title that hasn't been delayed for one reason or another. I think developers underestimate how long it takes to bug test these things. And of course you're also heavily reliant on your beta testers - if they're simply using it as an excuse to try the game for free rather than reporting any problems they find, bugs get missed for longer.

But it'll have a bug fix patch about 6 weeks after it goes live at the most.

Take the original Everquest for example. It's 9 years old and has 14 expansions. Each time they release one there is an emergency patch about a week after. Then a couple of days later another to fix that.
The most recent example is classic. They patched to fix an exploit, which is fine. That broke something else (I can't remember exactly what) which they also patched to fix. That bug fix broke something else, so now if a Necromancer or Shadowknight casts a particular spell while anyone in the zone is looking at them, it causes the zone to collapse and the player's client to crash. And that's after 9 years experience. Madness.

True
It got to be anoying for them aswell, everytime they make a patch to silence the screams from the community they breakse something else, and then everyone sais "thats so typical them". It ain`t easy beeing a DEV

Anyone else noticed that usually delaying release for reasons like 'we want to make sure it's perfect' is 9/10 times tell-tale sign that the game actually turned out plain horrible?

Maybe they want to gather some extra hype in the hopes of breaking even. Think about it...

Well, I guess it`s a mix of reasons. One of the reason is the unstable marked now, they don`t want to release a game if the stocks (right word) or worth like nothing. The 2th thing, or at least they say, it`s delayed because there was too much misstakes and errors in the current version that would need to be fixed before release. Not that I care, I`m not going to play that game

A point to consider is that the publisher wants to avoid making the same mistakes as they did with Anarchy Online's launch. AO was buggy as hell when it was first released. I suspect they just aren't keeping up with their schedule, and are downplaying it.

Quote from spankmeyer :

Anyone else noticed that usually delaying release for reasons like 'we want to make sure it's perfect' is 9/10 times tell-tale sign that the game actually turned out plain horrible?

Maybe they want to gather some extra hype in the hopes of breaking even. Think about it...

Exatly my thoughts... I can't think of a game that got delayed due to bug-fixing and wasn't a pile of bug-infested sh*t when it finally got released...