SNW: The Dark Ages

K2-Raiden released some more information about Sword of the New World current status in The Dark Ages forum topic. (No. The Dark Ages is not a patch, although it sounds like one.) Most of the posts didn't really say much, and the rants and QQ didn't help either. But I managed to distill some notable information out of pages 1-12:

It sure is possible to release 2.9 and 3.0 at the same time. But there wouldn't a point to that. Instead we have decided to release 2.9 first followed by 3.0 soon after so that our QA guys will have enough time to test and fix all possible bugs with the patch. [...] I have no clue as to what happened 7 months ago. But I do know that they found a game breaking bug in the second half of 2.9. Due to circumstances that I am not going to reveal here, the rest of the patch was held back. [...] The sword team has kicked everything in gear and the wait is almost over. In fact one clue that I can give is that there will be a neat update even before the release of 2.9. [...] Between 2.9 and 3.0...our current estimate is 45 days depending on what bugs Guinn and the QA team sniffs out. [...] Let me reprioritize things in there. 1. Unban the legits 2. 2.9/3.0 3. Forum bugs 4. Illier compensation? 5. myst box recovery

The previous statement from K2 was that v3.0 will be available sometime in late May to late June. So, if assuming v3.0 will be in late June, we should expect the rest of v2.9 in mid/late-May, which is, um, from this week to 2 weeks later.

Hm, that is probably a bit too optimistic. I won't be surprised if they have to delay a bit. So instead of v3.0 by late June, maybe it is more reasonable to expect rest of v2.9 by then? I hope other players won't be too harsh on K2-Raiden/Raven/Guinn. I mean, they are humans after all, so long they are making the effort, there is no need to go "Hulk smash!" on them. As for how things will be... Well, we will see...