Though this comes a day late, happy 4th of July everyone! Even if you didn’t celebrate the holiday, we hope you had a fantastic 4th. We at Soulbound were working hard over the weekend to try and meet the goal we set for the store release, or should I say, website release...

As we were developing our store, we observed much of the work to get the online store up and running would have to be re-done with the release of the new website, so in the interest of efficiency, we decided to merge the two streams. While website 2.0 looks visually similar to its predecessor, the coding behind it has been massively improved to provide our users with more functionality, security, and scalability. It’s built upon a different technology which is pivotal to our ability to do some of the things we want to do with the community. However, in spite of our efforts, the amount of work required to get the website up was more than we could do in a short period of time, especially with the holiday. Even after working through the 4th in an effort to see the new site live today, there was simply too much work remaining.

So, our options were to either push back to tomorrow and work hard to get something out, or push back to the end of the week to get it out right.

After discussing with the team, we decided to shift the launch all the way to Friday to grant us some breathing room. In doing so, it ensures we avoid any last-minute launch hitches and allows us the time we need to make it right. As a temporary measure, we’re also shifting development resources internally in an effort to ensure the website is done by Friday. This delay also serves to give us more time to add content to the Game Guide.

Over the last couple of weeks, there have been many lessons learned about team allocation, the critical path, and even setting deadline dates right after a holiday. Our goal is to be constantly learning from our work so we never make the same mistake twice. This was ultimately a resourcing problem as we are still a small team trying to do big things. This will be mitigated in the future by hiring new team members to take on those roles most prone to bottlenecks; in this case, a dedicated web developer.

That all said, know that while the website had to be pushed back, the majority of the team continues to make forward progress on the game. As well, we’re working to bring you the first Kickstarter reward, the Kickstarter exclusive “CoE Wallpaper.” Eddie has outdone himself yet again with a fantastic lore-based wallpaper which we believe will find a place on your desktop for quite some time.

Finally, for those that backed at reward tiers which include a forum border. Take a look at these shinies. And if you’re not happy with yours, remember, once the shop goes live you can always upgrade to get a better border. Below, you’ll also find a preview of the Work-In-Progress account page on the new website -- the information isn’t accurate as it’s pulling from a test database.

Figure 1 - Forum Profile Borders

Figure 2 - New account page

Speaking of images -- while looking through media to post to the upgraded media section of the website we discovered a few pieces of concept and screenshots which hadn’t been shared yet. Look forward to the additions to the media section, and here’s a sneak peek of some of the new images you’ll find.

Figure 3 - Concept Art

Figure 4 - Screenshot