Googleness wrote...
so.. any speculations on the release date of the demo?
Here is my wild speculation based on everything i have read.
Demo World-wide release: The week of Feb 5-11 to coincide with KoA: Reckoning . This is also about a month before the release fo the game. KoA: Reckoning demo is also coming out about a month (a little less) before the release date. I am assuming the EA thinks that if they release it the same week as KoA, all the people that buy KoA will play the demo to unlock the ingame items since you have to play both demos to unlock all the items (I think that is what I read).
Demo Early Access release : Was likely originally slotted for this week (1/11/12), but got pushed back for some reason (hopefully small changes based on beta feedback and not marketing strategy). I hope it will be next week, but I think it will likely be the following week (Jan 29th- Feb 4th). I think it will only be a week before the world wide release beacuse that will help build hype for it. If it is too early, then people will forget about it. A week early allows all of us and assorted media sites (i.e., Kotaku) to play it, post comments, etc. and allows people who are not familiar with the series (EA's push to make it friendly to new players) to get excited about the demo.
However....I could be wrong on all of this