I think they should have a random-number generator that randomly sets it somewhere between 59% and 30% every two or three days.

We should start some kind of pool about what the release date will be. I don't know what kind of prize....maybe just the joy of winning!

Please don't! It will just fill up the thread with dates, making meaningful discussion difficult.

Oooh, good point. Okay. We won't do that.

Now get back to designing! heehee

Hmmm... Bribery didn't work (again)!
Begging hasn't worked (yet)!
Attempts at confusing them into telling have failed (to our dismay)!
Bribing with Chocolate; Flowers and Money have all failed (DRATS)!
Attempting to infiltrate the LDW secret lair has failed (none of knows where it is)!

I KNOW! Let's try FLATTERY! (Hey I've heard it'll get you anywhere)

Queen Carla, we think you are the bestest Queen on the forum.
Barb Lady Fair, You are the greatest administrator we could ever ask for.
Ladies, when you mumble lines of game code at us, our hearts skip a beat.

Whatta ya think guys and gals? Think this approach might work? You come up with some! If we bombard them with sweet talk maybe they'll break down and give us a hint!

Would posting a guess when it have been increased spam the thread?

Probably, in fact more so I'd say as people would have several guesses at different update points. There was a similar thread going when VV3 was announced containing guesses on its release date, and I gave up reading it after a while. There were just too many posts, all of which were based purely on guesswork.

This thread is going the same way. In about ten weeks we've got through 28 pages so far, and the game is still only at 40%.

We love to see the excitement and anticipation in the discussions here, but trying to guess when the game is going to be finished is futile. As I said several pages back in this thread, there is no way to tell from progress bar updates when the game will be released. We certainly don't want to stop the fun discussion, but posting guesses about release dates again might get the thread locked.

As you can see from the dates below for VV3's progress bar, it has taken anywhere from a few weeks to two months to move 10%. Toward the end, progress slowed tremendously. It's best to celebrate when the bar moves upward and let us do our work on the game!

My earlier post:

In concordance with that post, think of programming as writing a large novel. Sometimes a paragraph you wrote just doesn't work, or contradicts something you wrote before, and has to be rewritten. Sometimes an entire chapter leads somewhere you didn't intend. Other times, you take a certain approach and reach a desired conclusion, but it makes another part of the story unworkable, and you have to rewrite several chapters from several subplots of your story. And other times, the words seem like they are begging to crawl off your fingers an onto the page.

The same is true of a computer program; just like a novel, it's got several subplots - a system for villager health, recording it, ways of affecting it, ways of being hurt and healed. That plot has to agree with the plot for skills, where a villager may have an accident in the use of a skill and hurt themselves, or through the use of healing, be cured of sickness. (and stop losing health.) If any one of these subplots refuses to agree, steps may have to be retraced unpredictably so that a complete, coherent, functional story - or computer program - can be written.

Programmer's and author's estimates are wrong most of the time because these things can't be predicted, to the frustration of their publishers.