Bloody 'Mega' (DAOC Catacombs expansion release date stupidness)

So much for my bank holiday weekend of playing with the new DAOC classes

Posted by a GOA (who run DAOC Europe) chap on FH

"As there has been a lot of speculation, debate and misinformation spread
on this topic I'll repost here the salient points. I have made all these
points before in other threads but this will hopefully make it easier for
people to find this information. I will no longer respond to threads
regarding Catacombs release as there is nothing more to say that I
haven't already said several times. I don't feel that anything useful is
achieved by repeating the same information in a multitude of different
threads - in some cases multiple times in the same thread.

Here is the situation. I won't name the company involved but will instead
refer to them with the pseudonym 'Mega'.
We told the distributor we wanted to release the expansion on March 25.
For technical and business reasons the patch has to go live this week.
Somewhere along the line 'Mega' weighed in and said that they weren't
prepared to add another title to their March list and they'd only touch
the game if it was released in April. As our distributors do a lot of
trade with 'Mega', they agreed so as not to upset a very large customer
and told all the other retailers that the release date was now April 15th
for a simultaneous launch of the expansion and the complete box. After a
lot of 'phoning people we came to the following compromise which keeps
us, 'Mega' and the distributors happy. 'Mega' is prepared to release on
the 1st April so officially the UK retail release date is then. However
we are sending stocks to all UK retailers this week (at the same time as
for other European retailers). We know that most of them will sell stock
as soon as they recieve it rather than wait for release dates so we know
that UK players won't be at a disadvantage. 'Mega' 'wins' it's fight to
move the release to April, UK players can get the game for patch day and
our distributors don't have to deal with losing 'Mega' as a client.

This is why any site you go to will have a release date of the 1st April
or later. However shipment of stock happened today, so as soon as
retailers recieve their boxes they will be sending it out. As far as we
are concerned the release date is still the 24th March. There has been a
considerable amount of effort put in place to ensure that UK players have
the opportunity to buy the game at the same time as gamers on the
continent and we are confident that this will be the case."

Can't guess who bloody 'Mega' are but they can shove their stock up their
'Sear'