Mercury is simply a stall tactic which KK is infamous for.. When they can't provide what was originally promised or stated, they always move to this option.
The sick reality is, KK doesn't care about their customers period
Which is sad.. but I think a lot of us can vouch for this. KK has given up on their International customers, its why they are diving deep into the Asian community to look for a new source of revenue, since I can't only guess the lack of current players isn't paying for their bandwidth nor servers nor salaries.
Its more than obivious KK doesn't have the right amount of "proficent" devs in place to do a project like NC. Time and time again, the community has reached out to offer help with coding, gfx, ect ect.. but KK has refused all the time. They claim it legalities, which is a bunch of BS, cause if they were serious they would do whatever it takes to get the help.
KK boils down to this... they are a bunch of kids trying to play in the big boys market.