Maybe
Or maybe I knew what I was getting into, thats why I'm not frustrated.
I was here when they first announced the launch day...15th of March. In 2010. Then they modified it to 15th of April. Then to 20 of May. Then to 15th of Jun. Then to 25th of August. Then in August they said it will be launched 'when ready'. I've been here for more than a year now and saw the development speed. Yes, it was (and still is) very slow. It took months to implement basic features.
When Jordi said that the game will launch in March 2011 he was honest and admitted that its necessary to keep the development going. I accepted the fact that the game has to launch in an unfinished state otherwise it may never ever launch.
As I said I saw the development pace. I expect Prelude to go for 12 month MINIMUM. It won't end after 6-9 months. I never expected any new content in the first 3-4 month after launch, if we get anything I'll be surprised. I hope they will switch decay and item quality on soon, since it was working during beta only got switched off because of the lag issues. With these 2 things the economy may survive.
If we get cooking and perhaps taming in like 4 months I'll be glad.
Is the state of the game good ? No, not really, but its still fun for many of us. Would it be better if it was full with new features ? Of course. Can we do anything about it ? No. We can wait patiently or leave. Complaining on forums doesn't help even a tiny little bit. The devs are working day and night, they just can't do more. I accepted this in May, thats why I'm still here. Anyone who expect a faster development will be disappointed. Will we see a big drop of the numbers of players ? For sure. Will there be enough players to help the game survive ? I hope so, but we will see.
Is it correct business to launch an unfinished game ? It is if they were honest about it. Were they honest enough ? No, I don't think so. It would have been much better to be more frank about the state of the game. Though the devs hardly advertised the game, or they didn't advertise it at all, so we can't blame them for that. It were the players who started the hype in February, and I was worried when I saw that. Its never good to promise non-existent features to people to get them to buy a game. And the word 'potential' makes me want to scream, lol. Who buys a game for potential ? I buy a game for what it is not what it might become one day.
And I see another problem. Players simply don't like to believe some facts if they don't like it. So they are like 'ok they said so but we will see', they keep living in denial and when they actually get to see that they were wrong they start complaining. This is plain stupid imo.
Its not about PvP pr peace. Its about accepting the game as it is now, being able to wait and have fun meanwhile or choosing to complain. I understand everyone who is upset about the promised but still missing features like comfort, item and skill decay, taming, archery, animals, better combat. But I have no sympathy toward anyone who complains about features that were never promised.