it was probably needed like 1-2 years ago.
Albeit it could have been sooner, maybe 6 months to a year (absolute max a year though imho) -- it simply have not been possible until now.
We've tried a lot of times to get something big together but it always fell flat on it's head and we had to settle for much less, first now with the additions to the cRPG team of Panuru, Matt2507, Senni_Ti and Huscarlton_Banks -- together with San/Tydeus and all the guys donating their items and time for feedpack/advice etc (Thanks cassia, daruviuan, jona, blackbow, _Tak_, cFlames & Battlepriest,
apologies if I forgot someone) -- we've been able to push something like this ahead within reasonable time. It takes a lot of manpower and a lot of hours and so far all the volunteers who tried bailed out and usually without a word
leaving a lot of stuff unfinished that then had to be reworked on top of the original "job". We (
MBG devs) also took out a chunk of time off from MBG to discuss these changes and see them through, time that could have been spent developing MBG.
We'll continue to monitor the effects of this patch of course, work out the kinks and issues and hopefully even improve it for the better as we see how everything comes together after a couple of weeks.
I'm personally not 100% happy, there's still some things that needs a kick in the butt in terms of fiddling and tweaking
but overall I'm having fun, much more fun than previously!