Yay for subforum!
As for the release date, this is not the first or the last time people asked. AH will be under a lot of pressure to specify it. Please don't. Release it when it will be ready. Sure, you could release and then patch it later, but majority of the gaming portals will review the very first version available. If the initial version has some issues, it may be more difficult to get new gamers on board.
However, have you considered doing pre-orders? There's more to that than getting money early and gauging potential interest (it's different this time. Now you know there's huge market for old school dungeon crawlers). People who do pre-orders early (lots of us hanging around here will buy it the first day) are dedicated fans and skilled modders. You can do a limited closed beta testing among them and you'll get the product thoroughly tested with a high quality, detailed bug reports. You won't have any troubles finding volunteers for that privilege
Speaking of the LoG2, I have one question for now. Do you plan to include more steam-punk style motives in it? It was duly noted that prisoners in LoG1 were delivered to the top of Grimrock by an airship, yet there were no further references to its technology. I got the impression that prison level was kept a secret and its technology was not known outside of Grimrock mountain, so that airship was the only reference to a widely known, semi-modern technology in Grimrock world. My suggestion is to not overdo it, but adding some technology oriented items occasionally could add a nice twist to it. Alternatively, you may do something similar to Arcanum, where you could choose a mage or technologist character development, but I doubt that would fit well into Grimrock lore.
