I think summer next year is a little too pessimistic. We are 8 months in at this point and halfway through the workload estimate. Another 8 months puts us in April. I believe the polish-hell that we got the last time was the result of a lot of shoddy work in the early stages of 0.7, back when times were the most rough for them. Thus, a large amount of content had to be redone.
This time, i think they learned their lesson and the polish estimates won't be the same cursed "10 tasks completed, 9 new tasks added" stuff we had to contend with.
Still, i had hoped they would be able to get back down to yearly or even near-yearly updates, like the Rose update (10-11 months).
I agree the current trend does point to an April release, I'm just being cautious. I prefer to be happily surprised by an earlier-than-expected release than bummed it takes longer than expected. And I know unexpected problems happen, and projects sometimes get more complicated than anticipated. So I like to leave some wiggle room when making estimates for myself, and I like to give others the same benefit.
All that said, it's true that the rate of tasks being completed is not diminishing significantly as happened with the latest release. So that might be a hint that this extra caution might not be necessary this time around.
Their current estimations (dutifully communicated to patrons several weeks ago) still aim for an end-of-the-year release, but they have set an important internal deadline for this month, so we'll *soon* get some further confirmation about it.
Note that writing tasks received a huge cut several months ago when they reached a satisfactory point of script development, so other 'planned' tasks might be drastically cut down too. Namely, edit and posing ones, if their new workflow actually works as they hoped. Anyway, actual patrons will have enough info at their disposal to make their financial choices without being led on by false expectations.
I really, really hope they manage to meet an end-of-year deadline. That would be awesome, and would do wonders to regain those who became distrustful after the long wait for Gomira. What you said about the total number of tasks already including a safety margin gives me a lot of hope.
Here's wishing for a Christmas release!
Edited to add that, when I talked about false expectations, I never meant that the Nuts were giving anybody false expectations. I meant that I didn't want to give anybody false expectations with a forecast, specially regarding somebody else's work.