The text below may answer many questions people have about availability of datafiles, time frames and so forth so please go through it first before posting:
JLong said:As for paying us, or being employees, or Lonewolf developing the files themselves. These are not options. The reason is very simple.
Intellectual Property. All games systems have copywrights on their game material. If we developed our files and charged for the service, we could be sued by GW for instance as we are making money on their product. As such we do develop our files, but they ARE NOT a replacement for the printed codex rules. In fact, you are still required to own the Codex rules if you use the datafiles.
As for LW making the files themselves, these same issues would arise for them. This is a key reason for LW specifically NOT providing datafiles. They also DO NOT HOST the files. They do however provide a services that when files are updated and those datafile maintainers provide the file locations, AB will get the updated files for you. You however are not required to use the auto-update feature and therefor not pay the annual subscription.
I understand that the 5ed codex has been wanted for a LONG time, however please understand that as volunteer gamers doing this on our own time, we will only get them done when we have the time.
The purchase of Army Builder did not provide you the purchase of datafile rulesets also. It DID however provide you the tools to create any datafile ruleset you wish. Every person is more than able to maintain their own files. I personally recommend against it, as if everyone did their own files then how do you know their version is correct? But if we are not getting something done fast enough, that is an option provided.
As always, the maintainer team will continue to create a unified standard datafile set that 'should' be used to confirm validity of lists. These updates will be done when we have the time and resources to get them done. I am sorry, but Rome wasn't built in a day, and that also goes for the datafiles. As for bugs, they happen. We are only a dev/test group of about a dozen people. We cannot possibly come up with every single varied list that is possible in a codex, and sometimes programming works one way, but when applied in another it breaks. Even Microsoft has bugs if their software.
How many of you are running Vista right now? That was released with piles of bugs, and more show up every day. That is why you get an update almost weekly! These updates from MS are provided weekly because they have hundreds of developers to help fix issues. We do not, so our updates will take a bit longer.