You won't be playing Fable II with your friends when it comes out next month, unless your friends come over to your house to play. And why would they do that, since they won't be able to use their characters?

It was just announced that online co-op – one of Fable II's notable bullet points – won't be in the game when it's released. And actually, "announced" isn't quite accurate, since it wasn't an announcement, but a passing mention on the blog of Xbox Community Manager "Sara N", who posts as "DirtyDiva" (Is it too much to ask that people who speak on behalf of companies use their full names? It is? Okay, never mind).

The idea was that the world of Fable II would open for friends to seamlessly join each other's games in progress, to play together and help one another out. Think of it is an MMORPG: miniaturely multiplayer online role-playing game. The feature, which will supposedly be added in a patch, isn't ready yet because they're "still making tweaks".

It's a bit alarming that such an important feature is dropped at this late a date. The game is due out in three weeks and they're just now getting around to telling us a major feature isn't ready? And does this remind anyone else of the way the original Fable was so scaled down by the time it was actually released?