1. I'm no programmer.sonicboom12345 wrote: ↑28 Apr 2018, 05:37 Meaning no disrespect to you, but these are the words of someone who's 100% in the mindset of a programmer and either doesn't understand or doesn't give a toss about marketing. The number 1.0 *means* something to people. When OpenMW hits 1.0, it will get a thousand times more eyeballs than it will when it hits 1.1, or 1.2, or 1.3.
2. I got your point, and many of us thought the same once, but I've actually seen what gets views and buzz. There was one time when OpenMW got so much publicity (from super crappy journalists who wrote so many factual wrongs) we couldn't handle it all. When was this? When we posted a news post saying that one user was working on a port to Android.
Here's my theory of how it might work: If we're clear in the release post for 1.0 what our goals are, I truly believe the buzz won't be huge. If we then release 1.1 with AO, HDR, bloom, PBR support, awesome scripting, etc etc, and are emphasizing this in the release, the buzz will surely get going even though it has the number 1.1 in it. Journalists like to write about cool stuff, and those features are cool stuff.
To be honest, I don't actually think bloggers and journalists couldn't care less if some game hit the goals for version 1.0. But if you tell them about the actual features of that game, they might just get interested.