It is. It's EXTREMELY slow.
Just to give some measure of comparison, World of Warcraft, which is a pretty big game, had a SMALLER team (IIRC, there were 30 guys working on it), was released late 2004 and was started around 2000. That's 4-5 years total.
Well I'm not saying they are not slow. But I think I'd need a deeper insight into the industry to actually evaluate that claim. For instance:
Let me try to play the role of a defender for TW, just for a moment. The following things could be said about your argument:
- World of Warcraft is a very different game. These two might not be comparable at all.
- Blizzard was (I think) much bigger then, than TW is right know.
- You yourself aren't sure whether the figure of 30 people is correct, but even if this was true, they could still have outsourced things. Blizzard was likely able to do that.
- WOW reused graphics from War Craft III; also storywise the world of World of War Craft was already existing, while the universe for Bannerlord mostly, due to being a prequel, had to be developed
- Game developement has changed vastly in the last 15 years, it might be much harder to publish a game to the satisfaction of players now then it was back then
- also there was an attempt of coup in turkey, resulting in a two year long state of emergency. I can only speculate, whether this influenced developement or not
[/lawyermode off]
To be clear, I am not saying you're wrong, but I don't think that the sheer lenght of the developement process alone is an argument for any state the game should or would have to have at a single point in time.