There will be dev blogs in time, but please don't spam the forums with topics asking for them. We know you want them, we want to give you them, but we don't want to give them to you until they're done and ready.

Being a CCP apologist doesn't get them off their ass, keeping their feet to the coals will.

I hate it when people that pay me money have reasonable expectations of me too.

I'm pretty sure they are doing this for a paycheck, not because they are sweet guys.

You aren't entirely untrue, but I submit a rebuttal:

If I told my customers that I will have something done soon(TM). That I will be updating them, but I will not be telling them WHEN I will be updating them. Well, I'd be written up (or fired if this was a reoccurring problem) and I'd have no one to blame but myself.

Counter-point: If you did tell them WHEN and WHAT and were unable to meet the aforementioned deadline due to, oh I don't know, your staff quitting or a production clusterduck like having a machine break and parts take two weeks to get, how happy do you think they'd be?

Work in manufacturing, your patience with this kind of 'development' will be longer than prolly anyone else you'll meet.

This is why they give us SOON and crap like that, because they most likely either don't know, or don't want to deal with the poopstorm we've been known to unleash at the drop of a hat about anything.

Also, Shanghai is still just horribly understaffed for what they need to do : /

I agree with the content of your post, I just trimmed it for brevity.

I do want to respond to this part specifically because I can certainly sympathize with the people who are getting frustrated with the current method of establishing a verbal roadmap.

There are many parts of this game that have no timeframe, let alone an unreasonably long one. Without any sort of time reference, it is really difficult to be angry with CCP for not meeting deadlines, simply because there are no deadlines.

Not that I am upset about this, I long ago resolved my internal conflicts with the realities of CCPs methods of production.

I will say this though:

When the only people who are content with the development schedule are people who have essentially given up on this game being good any time soon, that is a horribly caustic environment to create within your community.

I am consistently advising people to reduce their expectations of CCP, so as to save themselves the frustration of disappointment. If cynicism is the default in all your long term users, then something is clearly wrong.

I feel bad for people who think that this game is going to take some sudden leap forward. That alone should speak volumes, but maybe I am just to much of a skeptic to be a productive member of this community.

Tinfoil hat time:

CCP does not want to provide any sort of accurate guesstimates for when features may be ready because if portions of this community were to find out that feature x that they are waiting desperately for will not be released for x months/years there might be an exodus of players.

Really though, it is just easier and more accurate to blame gross incompetence on the part of the previous EP, and hope that if you give Rouge a couple of more months then we might see a proper set of goals and timelines. That hope is completely irrational, and I do not advice anyone to put anything more than a spec of hope into a solid turn around on this project.

Exactly.

It is a problem of culture within CCP, and one that will not be addressed anytime soon. Which is very unfortunate.

So calling the devs out for information is being an *******? Good one.

Until the devs give us solid data on a consistent basis and actually try to discuss changes with us (even through the CPM, I don't care what the interface is so long as there is an actual dialogue) I will continue to demand accountability for a game I've paid money for and would like to do again in the future. As it is, I stopped playing after the 'mouse overhaul' ruined my gaming experience and refuse to play without proper mouse support.

Throwing a man a bone for a well-thought out idea is not the same thing as being critical of the process and demanding CCP do better.