The natural response under those circumstances is to communicate as minimally as possible, use Dilbert-like euphemisms, and make faint gestures towards "community" and so on. Maybe favor a few people who would give your team compliments even if they held a public bonfire and torched the entire project with napalm. Privately, blame the bosses. The higher-ups. The marketplace. The dumb consumers for believing in the project in the first place. The business. The technology. Say none of that, though. That's for the water cooler.
The thing is, most customers who read forums or even those who just have questions sense this position. They're attracted to it. Angered and provoked by it. It's better trollbait than sending three billy goats across a bridge.
This is why it's smart to make a clean breast of it, even if the truth is the kind of truth that someone(s) should be canned for. The company that can come out and say, "We totally screwed up--our project is underresourced, we hired the wrong people, we don't understand the technology that we want to move into, our public relations people don't talk to our project people" and so on, in the absolute bluntest way you can without scapegoating an individual, is the company that in the end triumphs. You don't scapegoat individuals because failure on that scale isn't an individual failure, it's an organizational failure, and in a funny kind of way, no one's fault.
Here's why you triumph. First, you stop the bleeding and the desperate signalling of weakness. You're strong enough to admit it, to be straight about it, to lay it all on the table. In a weird way, that's disarming--when you come up against a truth-teller, it's so rare that it's kind of charming. As long as the truth-teller makes good, and tries to change--otherwise, it's pathetic and annoying about the third or fourth or tenth time you have to hear it.
Second, because having to come clean to the outside world is coming clean to yourself and your own. Often this stuff festers because there's someone inside an organization who just can't admit that their team and their group and their company screwed up, or that they wanted something magic for no money at all. Think Donald Rumsfeld, wanting to buy an occupation on the cheap, and you're in the ballpark. Now I am blaming an individual--not for the mistake, but for covering up, obfuscating, denying, stonewalling. Individuals don't make organizational mistakes by themselves, but they do prevent those mistakes from coming to light. Putting out in front of the public without euphemism, corporate-speak or CYA helps not just the public but the organization.
No one's lost money yet in this case, just expectation. All the more reason to just make a clean breast of it, put it all out there, and start rebuilding trust and confidence. It seems counterintuitive but service companies that have made mistakes are often strongest when they agree they've been weak.
Its ok, its not like WOTC outright mislead the public or anything like that.
Maybe they genuously thought that they would be ready.
But of course, a corpo is always wrong and evil...
You do realise that also schedules are not always so easy to follow... Why assumate ill plans intentions?
Maybe they genuously thought that they would be ready.
But of course, a corpo is always wrong and evil...
Lets look at the situation here the game table is not in beta yet this is 2 months after planned release. If the table wasn't in beta 4 mos before release I think I'd be pretty damn sure it wasn't making it at release date. They put out one statement in ampersand a full month before release stating that it would not be released so they knew at least 1 month ahead of time, and continued to advertise the product would be there at release at every other opportunity. I'm pretty sure we can assume ill intentions.