Everything is tracking for us to have a very strong beta by the end of the year (we started 1st of MAY). Then polish in January and launch first week of February. Of course that will depend on Nutaku's own launch schedule at the time too.
Regarding Crystal Maidens, I just scanned the thread. What I got from it was that they appear to have gone into soft launch with something that was not ready or didn't have enough content. Then they basically disappeared! If that's correct.... it's a weird one for an indie to do unless they are getting external pressure. We'll avoid that sort of experimental soft-launch, we'll only use that short period to test Nutaku integration with CSL.
I'm glad you're taking the Crystal Maidens lesson seriously. The last thing you want to do is piss off your potential players before they even get a chance to play your game. And then compound the problem by making it worse. I would've been interested in playing it because the art looked fantastic, but to adapt a saying, 'no matter how hot she looks, someone somewhere is sick of her shit.'