Shroud of the Avatar’s executive producer, Starr Long, has posted his thoughts and impressions about the recently-concluded fifth pre-alpha test release, and in addition to announcing some changes to what will be featured in Release 6, he also gave a carefully worded statement about the game’s looming October release date:

…we feel Release 5 was a resounding success. However we feel like the overall quality and polish of the game has decreased in many areas. Additionally we feel like we need to apply a more concerted effort on upgrading the visuals and user interface of the game. For those reasons we are in the process of rethinking our current release schedule and in particular we are going to refocus Release 6 on more polish and less content. We feel that about once per quarter we should have one of these polish releases to keep the quality of the game up to ours, and your, standards.

At this point many of you might be saying “Several systems have been pushed for more than one release now. How are all these changes affecting the stated goal of an October release?” Well thank you for the tough question. I have a mantra about ship dates: “No one remembers when you shipped but they always remember how you shipped.” With that in mind you should rest assured that we will launch when you tell us the product is ready. That might mean October is not feasible, but let’s focus on making the right product, not the when product.

He doesn’t come right out and say that the game’s release date has been moved back, but it’s…rather strongly implied, isn’t it? Thus far, reaction to Starr’s statement has been more or less positive, and hopefully it continues to at least remain civil. This being the Internet, however, I suppose it’s inevitable that people will complain in very negative ways about the prospect of a delay.

Because we all know, of course, that no other Kickstarter project has ever, ever had its release date pushed back!

Richard Garriott also gave his impressions on Release 5, and spoke as well about the need to polish and scrutinize various systems. A recurring theme, this, and one I agree the game is in need of.