Estimated Shipping Completion, Stretch Goals, etc.
about 6 years ago
– Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 12:00:18 AM
Open Legend familia,
Shipping continues to chug along. Today, 300 units were packaged and prepped to move on to USPS tomorrow. The packages go out in in palettes of 200 units to USPS. Tomorrow, I'm hoping to give a total number of palettes that have shipped thus far.
Good news, however (and this is only project, not a guarantee so please set expectations accordingly) the shipping facility estimates that the last of the packages will leave the warehouse Monday or Tuesday.
Just to re-confirm - I checked in on the international order status and yes, for EU backers, these packages are being sent to an intermediary so they can be shipped again and originate from within the EU.
Stretch Goals
Regarding the various Stretch Goals -- overall, there are numerous "moving parts" for each of these, between writing, editing, art requests, art review, layout, and final reviews, etc. Nearly all text for them has been written and initial reviews completed, but many still require review of the text.
Rather than trying to spell out all of the projects and their current states (which over the past two days, various aspects of half a dozen or more of them have shifted and changed even as Lucus was putting together this comment for posting), we've decided to focus on the next two most immediate and then as one of those two projects releases, we'll add in the next and update you all.
At present then, the two Stretch Goal projects most "ready for release" are The Mind in Flight & Massacre at Writhing Bridge. The Mind in Flight was specifically the $100k Stretch Goal of "The Mind in Flight -- A full-length House Nivenilya adventure w/ the mystical Order of the Flying Mind," while the Massacre at Writhing Bridge was the $50k Stretch Goal of "Intro Adventure set in House Valurien Territory" from the Kickstarter campaign.
At present, The Mind in Flight is in layout, with a draft layout submitted for our review while we await a final revision of one of the four pieces of art (the others have all been finalized) that will be included in the adventure.
Meanwhile, Massacre at Writing Bridge has its piece of art completed and finalized, but the manuscript is off to our editor for review, which once turned over we are hoping to have final revisions done promptly and then pass the manuscript off for layout with its finalized art. Significantly shorter than The Mind in Flight, layout of this release should be fairly fast.
At present then, the design is to get the final piece of art in for The Mind in Flight and approve layout by the end of the month, and release the final product in the first week of May, but further revisions of the art piece or fixing of layout issues may delay this by a up to a week (or possibly even more).
Once that finalized product is released, we should be able get the next product set up and released in two weeks or so, but that is also contingent on multiple reviews finding no serious errors. In an ideal situation though, by the third week of May, Massacre at Writhing Bridge should be released.
In the ensuing weeks, we have artists working on pieces for additional Stretch Goals and we have our editor reviewing additional manuscripts, but we struggle to set hard deadlines because a delay by one person of even a day quickly snowballs into a week's delay for the next person, while a need for even a simple revision of text, art, or layout can add a week or more as pieces are pushed up and down the production line essentially.
Beyond that, the next-most-ready piece is likely the mini-setting Shores of Valhalla as the text of that manuscript has been reviewed and approved but we are waiting on sketches of all the pieces of art for that release, with for instance, one artist having had to delay their contribution until they've made final edits on their Mind in Flight piece.
In summation, we hope to have the next release -- The Mind in Flight -- can be completed in next week or so and made available as a PDF via BackerKit, followed within the next two weeks by Massacre at Writhing Bridge.
Cheers folks!
Brian
Fulfillment Update 4/24
about 6 years ago
– Wed, Apr 25, 2018 at 01:08:24 AM
Hey Everyone,
Today's update is that I don't have much of an update. My intent was to get a specific count of how many orders were shipped out, however, because of the multi-layered nature of the communication chain (I'm not in direct contact with the people at the warehouse) I was not able to get that info today. My hope is for that to be delivered tomorrow.
I spoke with my contact and was assured that many of the packages have left the warehouse and each day, the same is true for more of the packages.
Since I'm on the topic of disappointing news, I'll also share that apparently it's standard practice for USPS to, upon receipt of such a large quantity of packages, have something of a bottleneck / delay of their own. So, while there is nothing that can be done to expedite the process, and it is really and truly out of our hands at this point, it may not arrive as quickly as something you order on Amazon. But please update us when you receive your package via a comment somewhere here on Kickstarter so others can share the excitement.
Lastly, for those who have been unclear on this, the EU friendly shipping guarantee does in fact mean that shipments will go to an intermediary facility to be shipped again once in your country. If you are in neither an EU nation, nor the US, I believe shipment will go out directly.
Thanks for your continued patience everyone, I think that's the light at the end of the tunnel that I spot up in the distance there...
Brian
