No doubt brother. Lets hope that worm has turned.

Additionally, even though those selected for the inital list may be random for the majority, the selectees can chose to accept the guidlines or not. It is a win/win for all concerned parties.

@GW - Accountability is key in my not so humle opinion. Moreover forgive my lack of clarity. A DB was part of the intended meaning. Sorry I often type these things at 3:00AM or later. Consequently my fingers and brain get lazy due to my very long work days.

I can think of one answer quickly: They might really only want a few tens of viable volunteers and a pool of a 100 or so candidates might be necessary to find that viable core. The whole business of them deliberaly selecting 'a couple of dozen' while also semi-randomly selecting a larger set from the preorder pool makes me think that they are wisely questioning their own ability to find the 'ideal' set of volunteers. This is about satisfying customers and not meeting an engineering spec, after all.

Don't have Demigod, but I got the rest coverd! 

For those of us that don't make it... Please keep the tidbits comming!   And for those of us that DO make it.  Give good feedback so it becomes a game we can all love!  I don't know how many thousands of hours I lost to playing Master of Magic or Civilization for just one more turn....

Perhaps so! Maybe we'll get to see.

Sadly enough I think a NDA will be the first order of business. I could be wrong however, but it would seem so...

The watershed factor for this title is very high in my opinion and careful information management will be a key factor it controlling the hype and hip factor.

As I said above, unless the plan changed from invite-only test towards the end of development to invite-only concurrently with open beta, I doubt the Alpha will have an NDA - there's not much sense in doing it if after a month or two those NDA'd people will just roll over to public beta and everyone will see anyway.

I'd love to help with the Alpha, and think I could do well since I've done a fair amount of software QA, but acknowledge that with only 7 Karma and a few Stardock Titles (Galciv II through TOA, everything ObjectDesktop-related, Sins+Entrenchment), my changes are pretty slim.

That given, when is Beta 1 (the "open beta") tentatively scheduled for?

True but again it all depends on the plan at hand. The details of which we are simply are not privy to at the moment. A controlled short term group to lay the foundation under a NDA then a general pubic one after the fact followed by a third high quality selected third one under a NDA again prior to release would seem a good course of action in my opinion.

I think August-ish or so?

I'll see if I can catch Yarlen to see if he'd mind answering if the Alpha will be under NDA or not.

I don't mind a NDA as long as there are pics shown by Stardock. Yes, I know they would be cloth map pics but that's fine as I' interested in it too.

August.

Longest.

Summer.

Ever!

Well, I think not just pics, but  also scanned copies of bear cavalry drawn by Brad.  

I do wonder how many people are going to be in the drawing.   I mean, just how many people have all three titles?

It would be nice to know my chances.