Honestly, I am very sad and feel my hope dying horribly after reading this news. I can understand TW and their desire to make the best M&B game possible and to polish everything before release, I can understand their position and their reasons. However, I can't stop myself from feeling like I got a huge blow.
And mind you, I'm not blaming TW for this, it's thier product and they are free to do whatever they want with it.
I just wanted to say that I had huge hope to see if not play the game by the end of spring or early summer (not a full game, but an early access or beta version), and now I received the information that I will have to wait 5 more months before I get some solid information about beta/EA/release date. My only hope now is that TW will do as they promised about announcing the release date few weeks before the actual release and we will get the announcement at Gamescom.
Another point is that I would like to say thank you to Callum for providing us with this information this early, so we will not have any false expectations before Gamescom, although I agree that it would be great if such news could be published here as well, not by users but by someone from the team dealing with community.
Once again, sorry if this post will annoy you, I just wanted to went my frustration somewhere, and I'm pointing out that I do not blame TW or anyone in particular for this, I respect this company and wish them nothing but good things.
Thank you for your time reading this.