Thank you for keeping us updated.
<private joke> the following post is dedicated to Jackoba's verbosity </>
I do have one comment, though, which I am afraid is not original and somehow expected.
It is quite possible that, after the free period, some players including yours truly will consider subscribing (or to be more optimistic, will subscribe more willingly...) if we have an idea of the development plan and general roadmap. I do hope that you have been working not only on setting up the billing system, opennel and the webpage, but also on the game itself, as you may have hinted in previous communication, even if it is simply defining a generic roadmap.
Plainly speaking (and without going now into whether there are plenty of things to do, roses to smell, the greatness of sandbox games, and how to spend hours "counting the spots in a varynx skin during sunset", etc.. that's offtopic) it is easier to wait for news while the game remains free, which, in my opinion, it is something to be grateful for, and serves the purpose of keeping the community "tight". However, since we do have now more and more concrete details, it would be great if we could also have more concrete aspects on the game itself.
Let's consider this in 2 ways:
a) Without going into the details if you cannot or do not want to provide them, Could you give some hints i.e., be more especific concerning global game aspects and scenario evolution, such as if there will be minor / major updates to the game at the same time of the new "release"? Can we expect a simultaneous patch during the new "rererelease"?
b) Otherwise, can you confirm that the game will be back to pay-to-play, "as is", with exactly the same feature set? Can you give a "stalled lower bound" i.e., time with monthly subscription in which no changes are planned / considered?
I hope that having this information around could help players make (more) informed decisions, and even the hint of a minor update could be a strong reason to attract and convince the player population segment that are in a "wait and see" state, or who may think that if game remains "as is", it may be worth suspending the subscription until when new features are added. I don't want to think that it is naive to expect some of these questions to be answered
My optimistic side says that it would be quite reasonable, even from the marketing point of view, to expect some candy at "release", rather than a disappointing "switch to pay mode now", despite how realistic and necessary this may be...
Yours
Ani
