The German version is seemingly still on track for a November 21 release so it doesn't seem overly likely that they are delaying it to get their act together on the release patch. Maybe the delay of the English version is simply due to a manufacturing/logistics issue. Who knows? Could also be that Eurogamer got something wrong. They mention "Ancaria" in the news article as the world of Gothic but last I checked Ancaria was the world of Sacred
.
Anyway, I'm absolutely convinced that this expansion is going to be a proper disaster. Reasons for that firm conviction being the buggy as hell original engine, the poor track record of the Indian developer (the latest The Guild 2 add-on -made by them- seems to be a proper disaster, too), the poor state of the game as per previous showings, the very short development time, the indication of a release patch, the low price target (expansions are usually sold for ~EUR 30.00 not ~20.00 like Forsaken Gods), the lack of any greater scale advertising or exclusive previews in the German press like JoWooD usually did/does for their flagship brand. Seriously, this one smells like fail all over...
By the way, is there any word on when the 1.7 patch will come out? Weren't it supposed to be released before the expansion (or something like that)?
Yes, the 1.7 CP was originally estimated to be finished before the release of the expansion but it seems like the CPT decided somewhere along the way to achieve a few rather ambitious goals with 1.7 (due to 1.7 being the final CP and all that). They are keeping the contents of the patch under very tight wraps. No one but them really knows exactly what's going to be included. All that is known so far is that they were able to implement sounds for the drawing/sheathing of weapons and that they managed to make the AI attack in packs/groups instead of only a single enemy attacking at a time. Sounds pretty modest...
But who knows? From reading some of their posts you could get the impression as if they got a big, fat ace up their sleeves.. but then again if anyone mentions any big scale changes (like the combat system) they immediately dampen the optimism. Thus it's very hard to tell what 1.7 is really all about.