As you may have read, Snail Games USA has chosen to delay the launch of Age of Wushu by over 6 months, with the game now set to launch on 3rd May 2013 instead. Of course, the community does deserve an answer since most were preparing for the game to open later next month, and here is an official response from the forums:
Hello everyone,
We know that today’s official announcement of the Age of Wushu launch timing has caught many of you off-guard. We would appreciate the chance to explain to you, our fans, why this decision to change the release schedule took place.
Recently, we were privileged to have the Senior Management team from our headquarters in China–including the President of Snail Games, Mr. Shi—visit our offices for a series of discussions. After two weeks of meetings, conversations and planning, we collectively came to the conclusion that in order to meet the high expectations that we, and YOU, have for the game, Age of Wushu would benefit from and deserves a larger launch and a perfect polish.
Age of Wushu has been lovingly crafted for the Chinese market. Over the last two months, Snail Games has doubled in size as the scope of adapting it for the North American market has come into focus. As part of this preparation, we have hired writers to go over each and every localized word, including every task and conversation to make sure that it all makes sense to the western audience. We also hired great people to be part of our growing Customer Service and Community teams. These new team members are fully dedicated to properly supporting Age of Wushu and all Snail Games titles going forward.
These desires to present the best version of the game possible unfortunately meant that we would have to delay the Age of Wushu release until February 2013. Between now and then, we will be hosting two closed Betas, CB1 in November and CB 2 in December. Anyone who has Pre-Ordered the Elite pack is guaranteed to be included in both Closed Betas and the “Exclusive access period” which begins February 1, 2013.
Thank you for your patience and support and please know that we are ardently working to give you the best experience we can for Age of Wushu.
Keep posting on the forum and we’ll see you in-game soon for Closed Beta 1 in November!
In my opinion, localization should always be 1 of the top priority whenever an Asian game is going to be launched in the West, and vice versa. Did Snail Games USA just planned on releasing the game by simply translating the text in the first place? Why commit to a date then?
And why the 90-days head-start, given that the game will certainly be more lively with more players and the inevitable “pay to win” mindset of most online gamers? Snail Games USA sure is confident on the campaign working, which somehow was a success in China. We shall see~
