I think most people that haven't gone through business negotiations before view this as, more or less, akin to buying a used car. It's there, sitting, we've made an offer for said car. It's essentially rusting away. Yes or no to my offer?
That's NOT what is involved with this kind of deal.
As Arcana, I believe, pointed out, this is, essentially, negotiation by committee. So the salesman doesn't have to just get his manager's approval. He has to get six people to sign off on the sale of the car. And, oh, yeah, Joe's with another customer right now. And Ed's on vacation. Bill? He was here just a minute ago. Does anyone know where Bill is? From this standpoint, it truly is like herding cats to get all necessary people to sign off on the deal.
Now, that said, I would assume that there are multiple deals going here.
1) What's the business plan? (In other words, how does NCSoft know that Nate and Co can run/manage the game?) Note that this doesn't just include, "Show us what you got," but were I in NCSoft's shoes, I'd want to know things like projected income/expenses associated with setting up and running the game, where they'd host, how will the store work, will there be a store, justification of these decisions, etc. And if any of those issues NCSoft didn't like? It would be a discussion about how NCSoft thought there was a better way to do it, or pointing out perceived flaws in the plan and having to rework it.
2) I'd assume that Nate and Co want to see a working image of the game. Going back to the car analogy, this would be like taking the car for a test drive. Just because a "car" is sitting on the lot doesn't mean it can start and drive. Again, the engineering resources NCSoft may be willing to apply to making that disk image work may be low, so it may be taking time for them to untangle the spaghetti code. While it may be being worked on, again, I'm betting that any engineer working on this part of it is not spending a lot of his time on it, as they probably have a lot more pressing issues. Put another way: His/her annual review probably relates to current live games. If they let this game slip a bit, it's probably not going to hurt their review as much as resurrecting a game image instead of fixing those bugs in Aion would.
3) What rights are associated with the game? Can Nate and Co change splash screens? Does NCSoft's logo have to be plastered all over things? Can they hold annual events, like the ski chalet? Do they have the tools to open the chalet? To turn on 2xp? Even if they do, are they allowed to? Or is the game actually set in stone at I23's normal state?
4) Licensing agreements? Does NCSoft have any input on that at all? Can the holding company license things to anyone they want without any input from NCSoft? Does NCSoft retain any rights? What rights do they retain? Can NCSoft use Statesman, etc. if they so decide, once the sale goes through, without contacting the holding company?
5) Terms. What's the up front payment? What are the periodic payments, if any? What happens if the cash flow set up in part 1 isn't there? How long will the contract be in effect? Is this a lease or a purchase?
6) Other things I'm not thinking of
That's a whole lot of stuff to get consensus on. Each one of those things not only has to be agreed to by the people Nate is talking to, but I guarantee that NCSoft's corporate lawyers are involved. And that's another layer of things dragging on the timeline. Even if the managers, etc. say, "Sure," the lawyers could, and probably are, coming back saying, "Giving up the rights to those characters is not in the best interests of the corporation. We've made edits to the contract." and the whole process starts over again.
There's a LOT more to this than just buying a car. It's more like buying a NASCAR, showing the sponsors you can drive at 200 mph and have a decent pit crew, and figuring out not only who the sponsors will be but also where their logos will be placed on the car.
This isn't a sprint. It's a marathon. That's why no news is good news.