Hi.
I think that the delaying of this game had it's good reasons. The game was not ready. Then how do you set a new release date?
Since it's the marketing guys together with the developers that set release dates. This is my theory:
What happends late may that almost all gaming sites writes about? Ill give u a clue, it starts with E.
E3expo (
http://www.e3expo.com/)
Check under S (
http://www.e3expo.com/current_exhibitors/index.cfm?search=Q-T)
14 - 16 may... how convinient. Say the NDA drops Monday 12 may, open beta starts soon afterwards. That gives SOE a very good chance to show their game to a very large audience. And why not publish the release date at the same time? Just make sure the release is close enought so people wont go somewhere else.