Disclaimer: This is a generic poll regarding game releases in general and tailored as well to Eternal Crusade. There is no canon information on whether or not EC will be delayed or released early, this is only an assumption on what mostly happens with big titles.

It is a well known fact that almost every gaming company has deadlines that are modified without their consent. Halo is one of those great examples of a marvelous game that lost a lot of extras because a certain company wanted to make a profit early. Eternal Crusade is shaping up to be a very awesome template for future MMO designs and has a lot of things going for it.

However, we come to the meat of the question. What would you be willing to sacrifice in order to play the game? Would you be willing to have EC delayed in launch to have more polished features and added functions that are currently being sidelined as "after thought" projects. Or would you have the game launched on time or earlier with more glitches and bugs yet to be smoothed out and certain features that could of improved gameplay missing?

Things that are typically left out due to time issues:

• Certain weapon variants that are more specific to a class or skill base but aren't necessary to keep things balanced. Such as different bolter variants or specialized weapon variants for each class. IE. weapon patterns from different planets which each have different ammo feeds, damage, over all weight, and handling performances.
• Armour Variants dedicated to adding specific modifiers and/or boosters. These are typically removed in RPG styled games because they overall aren't needed to finish a game. They added confetti to polish a characters build but don't make combat absurdly difficult without them.
• Vehicles are a well known facet of being removed or delayed. It has been announced that at launch that not all vehicles for each race would be available and this is a major thing that gets cut first. Every race has a ton of vehicles and we all know that only the most iconic will be at launch, possible postponement of launch date could see even more added without the necessity of a giant patch or update.
• Locations are also a major thing that gets cut. Campaigns and side-campaigns always have more to offer and are always slimmed down to what is the most fun and rewarding to be kept in a story line. An MMO is no exception to having several quests removed in order to speed up the delivery of the game. You typically end up seeing these same quests in later DLC or updates as the developers have more time but sometimes it is nicer to have them at launch and something that wasn't already planned being released later.
• Specific Unit Classes such as heroes and other starting classes. These have already been announced to be limited at launch with several other classes being confirmed to make an appearance. Giving additional time would see the launch day filled with more eye candy and knowing you don't have to wait to find out your favorite classes requirements and without needing to respec if needed.
• Generically, we all know concept art, music, backgrounds, and cinematics get cut a lot. I'm not even going to touch them because they will always be cut lol.

Things that will plague launch day if released before they are truly ready:

• Hitbox, wireframe, ragdoll, texture glitches galore. If anyone remembers the Diablo III launch, it was plagued with terrible texture rendering failures when on multiplayer because certain key protocols for online multiplayer weren't fully integrated.
• Weapon stats being unfinished. Soulstorm was a great example of weapons/units not doing what they were described as doing because the game was released before they were ever finished and THQ thought no one would ever notice. Granted an MMO is more refined than a traditional strategy game, there is still a high chance that certain weapons and effects will be bugged or overall not work because they were never truly finished. -thinks on the TF2 Engineer weapons update and how a -10% damage multiplier was actually a +30%-
• Still going to be a problem whenever the game is released but more of an issue when not given attention, balance of weaponry and damage over distance or damage over time. Every game whether FPS or RPG styled has this problem with several weapons at launch doing much more damage or way less damage than designed and rendering a bunch of things nerfed or buffed which then leads to a never ending string of rebalancing. Dota 2 is a prime example of how balancing should not be. Staggered releases that pay no attention to consumer feedback (snipers range being increased again and again while low HP heroes are continuously nerfed in melee combat) Releasing the game even two weeks later can help stop the worst of these problems and make gameplay that much smoother.
• Servers....we all expect this and all dread it but it's a fact. The sooner you release a game, the less servers you have and the greater the chance of all out server failure in addition to extremely long first launch times. Again, Diablo III was a great example of a game that had terrible launch day history with servers being offline for hours and in some cases, a few days.

They should release a finished product. A truly finished product, not a half baked cock up or it'll bomb. Surely that's the only view anyone can have.

But that doesn't necessarily mean it needs more time to be developed. The time put in doesn't necessarily equate to game quality, or ESO would be a masterpiece. Hopefully they know their own limitations and don't try to aim too high.

All of your four latter points would be solved through player use/feedback. Its essential to listen to player feedback, both for bugs and for general concerns,which is something most companies utterly fail at. Anet for instance, there are bugs in GW2 that have existed from the betas and they're too lazy to fix them.

Some companies are all talk and then they do nothing to appease the customers. That's why Beta testing is an important part of development. If EC can utilize their beta time well and get the feedback they need, we are golden for launch date. I just fear that they will attempt to release early because of all the hype which can lead to devastating repercussions. Every time I think of an MMO disaster or large scale player combat, I remember MAG from the PS3.

EC will have a long alpha/beta phase and the founder program so they start take money the 10 june. and the founder start testing the game earlier. there is no need of rush to the game. the founder will be "the boss" and the game will be completed in base of the founders feed back.

As Akragth said above, its more about the willingness of the devs themselves to listen (something that Anet should indeed learn, god i hate them so). Time usually isnt the issue in these situations.
That being said i voted for option 2, while id respect a delay i definitely not respect the game bogging itself down in an endless development loop, basically staying in Alpha/Beta for ages. Thats seems to be the new hip thing to do with these Steam Greenlight early access games.

A short delay isn't too much of a problem between open beta and launch, but community access being pushed off for months when a date was proposed is a slippery slope with the gaming community.

On that note, some concepts in design should be iterative and can only be truly "finished" after launching with field testing with the iterative design loop beginning all over.

With that said sometimes it is better to do a fast good job than a slow one chasing that unobtainable perfection. So once they get the core game into a good spot it would be more beneficial for them to launch and then release features they want implemented with some more polish or feedback.

Hopefully they have a legit test server to try tweaking numbers, systems, and even aesthetic items.

The only thing that would be acceptable would be to delay after beta tests to fix any bugs/glitches. They should no way delay the game for the sake of adding more content.

What I mean is that by the time of the beta, the gameplay/lore/characters/weapons/objectives/map/vehicles should all be finished and in somewhat of a working order by beta. Beta testing should be for resolving issues regarding these things.

Behaviour should not decide to add more of these post beta, as these can be added by DLC or expansion.

I am in agreement with the; delay if needed crowd. However, as Djemo stated, lets not get stuck in an endless loop.

As the Devs have not announced a 'solid' release date they should have plenty of time to get what they 'need' to get done and still hit a time line the fans will appreciate.

I really don't see these guys leaving their collective asses in the breeze when it comes to polish. They seem to be a mature dev team with a realistic view of what they can/can not get accomplished. Added to that the obvious transparency of the development and I am left with very little to worry about honestly.

So yeah, if they establish a 'hard release date' and then end up moving it, I will not be surprised nor upset. I would much rather see a complete game released as opposed to the trend of phasing the game in over a 10 year (HA!) period.

They should take their time and release a good game, that will not have a bad launch like so many other mmos.
They will get the money from us soon enough

But...keep us informed, maybe a Beta that is longer than usual?

I'm more concerned about ensuring the servers really can handle massive battles and still deliver decent gameplay. If anyone played WAR, they'll know that the first fortress sieges often just crashed servers, and were otherwise unplayable due to extreme lag and FPS issues. Considering the focus of the game was large-scale PvP, this was a gigantic kick in the nads to all the paying customers and an enormous failure on Mythic's part. The very heart of the game was rotten at release, and the heel-dragging when it came to even fixing this broken system was beyond a joke, never mind implementing one that would work properly.

By all means take the time to account for every eventuality because if you get to launch day and the game breaks it really sets the tone for your players. Sadly it's something which is becoming almost habitual amongst modern-day MMOs.