You have to realise PE's entire marketing plan for STO was to keep it quiet until 'just' before beta (like every other MMO out there does for the most part). I doubt I was shown a smokescreen and if it was, then it was one hell of a smoke screen to say the least. For the last 3 years alot of people have argued that until its been seen publically, then it doesn't exist, even though people 'have' seen builds of the game, even reputable people like John Eaves who commented how he loved seeing his ships ingame over a year ago, but still lots of people refuse to belive the game was more than pictures. And now, afterall all of this, people have become so convinced the game is a hoax, they out right believe that people that have seen the game were tricked or that the screenshots were photoshopped as though all the professinal games developers that worked at PE were playing Solitare for the last few years.
At the end of the day, PE was never inclined to prove teh games existance, because they didn't care, it would of destroyed thier planned marketng campaign for teh game, which most likely would of included a grand unvieling at last weeks GDC (educated guess there). My guess as to why the investers pulled out would be that having the publisher secured would of been a benchmark, venture capitilism has no compassion, the people investing don't care about the actual product, they just care about timelines and profits, thus, when the publisher pulled out, it screwed Pe royally. Now I'm not saying PE's management couldn't of handled things differently to fix this, but since MMO's cost so much money to make, its understandable that its not a matter of 'just' getting a loan for a few million dolllers to finish production. as with all things in life, if you don't have the money, sometimes you simply don't have the money and with the Kohnke lawsut looming over PE at the time, getting more funding would of been even more difficult. Remember also, the developers need paying, the bills need paying, money doesn't make itself and employees don't work for free.
I'm still trying to find out 100% where the NDA's stand though because I have so much information I'd love to share, but like I stated earlier, PE were way way way further along than concept art and they had alot of different builds of the game working with different aspects of the games structure. But then this is common sence really for an MMO so many years into production. I'm not sure if the game was in 'full' production as I've heard mixed opinions on this from inside PE and I'm not sure exactly what 'full' production entails in some peoples eyes due to these conflicting reports, eitherway, the devs wern't twiddling thier thumbs, its just a real damn shame Pe didn't release any teasers when they went down.
