Yeah, simple hand animations on this engine can be a bitch. It would be another long waiting time if you wanted them to add all that shit.

I dont mind waiting,

all those people thats complaining about waiting too long for 0.49,
should really get A life, serieus...
it seems that the only game they play is TCE,
there are plenty of other games available, "good games"

i rather wait 1 year, than 1 month,
because in the end, i know its gonna be juicy and tight!!
but when it released in 1 month, i know for sure that nothing is changed,
only A slight bit improvement,

but whats the point wanting for 0.49 to be released as soon as possible if its gonna look the same like 0.48?

I guess the thing is, animators are scarce. it took PoP all of 2 years of crappy "I'll do it later" animators till they finally said "gah! screw this" and went to another engine. something like this would proably push the release date back a few years, rather than a few months.

I'd rather wait a decent amount of time, get a few features and bug fixes, then have a rushed patch that does almost nothing, or wait another 2 years for it.

the point of getting the bug release? when it gets released, there will be a worldwide annoucement in ET.com and Fileplanet.com, not to mention several other sites. That means, more people will download, that means, a more lively TCE. You will nolonger be limited to the servers that are populated, you can expect more servers with a good population to play with.