[Chivas]

With the recent release of some excellent user made campaigns, I find myself doing more flying than posting now. The sim has finally become entertaining, which was made possible by the developers patches, and the community modders making good use of the FMB also made possible by the developers. I've never felt the developers weren't communicating, as they've made hundreds of posts in the forums, letting me know what they were trying to achieve.

I've never been enough of a fool to believe everything they were trying to achieve would make it into the initial release. In fact at the time I thought it impossible they could have anywhere near playable frame rates with all the highly complex features they were talking about. Oleg even mentioned features would be added as system resources allowed through the life of the series. Even then many people still throw WIP features in the developers face as "promises" for COD. I will say they were less than forthright on just how unfinished the sims actually was, but being forthright would have killed sales, and therefore any chance the sim could be completed. Its obvious their plan wasn't to just take the money and run, but to too quickly optimize COD as soon as possible after release, but at the time they probably didn't realise a complete graphic engine rewrite would be required to make it playable on their average customers systems. Personally I'm very happy they made the difficult decision to release an unfinished product, as it secured enough added financing to convince the series investors to continue their investment.

The development has had more than their fair share of setbacks, and there is still alot of work to be done even on the most basic features, but unlike most WW2 air combat developers, they've stayed the course, and probably will continue to stay the course as long as they can secure financing. The time required to rewrite the graphic engine and other required rewrites has definitely put the development in jeopardy, but the rumors in the Russian forums from people closer to development suggests the flame is still flickering, just wait for the official announcement. IMHO the delay announcemen,t and lack of info regarding the delay is probably due to sensitive negotiations regarding any number of factors, including financing, personnel, possible revenue streams for the game engine, and the priorities that would entail. Not to mention if its even financially feasible to continue the development.

This is all basic speculation, but if the developers/publishers had any devious plan as a few here suggest, the development would have quietly stopped work shortly after the release of COD in the West, licked their wounds and moved on to a more profitable genre, that takes far less work. Instead they spent millions trying to fix COD and build a Sequel, knowing full well that this time no one is going to buy the Sequel, until they're sure its a good product.