Isn't today also the anniversary of the publication of "The Hobbit?" Coincidence, or just luck? Light, it has to be luck. I believe the appropriate saying is, "Yahtzee."

All of those development costs could be completely true, but as a company if you don't communicate that to your fan base somehow (we're left assuming those costs, and hearing them from an ex-employee in an online forum) and don't pursue a true partnership from that same fan base from the beginning it only comes across as manipulative. That's incumbent on a good company as well, is it not: to keep the consumers as informed as is reasonable, and do what it can to assuage them in the event of difficulties. If your only communication is to say, "We're working on it. Oh hey, incidentally, we need more money..." I personally have had no dealings with Red Eagle, but from the severe negative reaction by the fans on an online community dedicated to the world they're producing product for (allegedly), I can tell you they're not running this part of their company well.

I'm glad snowball put forth that suggestion. When I first started reading the series (about 15 years ago) I was initially confused when the Ba'alzamon of TEOTW turned out to NOT be the Dark One, as the context of that book seems to indicate that he is the main bad guy. The name "heart of the dark" sounds pretty encompassing, for example - the heart being what gives "life" to the body, so the heart of the dark would seem to indicate its "source" - I know this translation comes from trollocs, and as Ishamael created trollocs they could have it wrong (he is their source after all), but that always to me felt like an idea that was amended later to weave the earlier error into the now larger story. It's not a critique, per-se, but understandable given the scope of the books and what they became. The story grew larger than it was conceived of originally, and I think most of us are glad it did. But this may have created "vestigial" elements that had to be ignored or explained in a different way to continue the tale - the voice in caps at the end of TEOTW has a little of that feel.