Hold on a sec- I thought beta access was determined by how active you are in the community.  Are you saying all I'd have to do is preorder and I can start playing next month?  Sorry, obvious n00b here.

That's for next weeks Alpha...Betas can be played by anyone that preorders.

How many players should/can we allow in a game? 8? 12? 32?
As many as possible. Players can always choose smaller numbers for games, but choosing higher numbers we will be limited by the engine. So 32. Or more even for 64 bit machines ...

How sophisticated can we make dungeons in the game?
Keep them to a single level, except maybe for the quest that wins the game, if that is in a dungeon, but have the engine able to handle multi-level dungeons.

How sophisticated can we make quests in the game?
Very.

How sophisticated can we make tactical battles in the game?
Very. The point of much of what happens on the strategic map is to make cool stuff happen in battles. That is what you research the armour, spells, creatures and catapults * for *.

How big of a scope can we give the campaign?
Although campaigns are cool this game will stand or fall on the strength of its random / sandbox / custom games.

It's not unique outside of games. Google is somewhat famous (infamous?) for endless "beta" projects before finally tagging them as final.

It certainly is rare though, particularly in a genre like gaming where a typical non-MMO game has a fairly short sales lifespan. I mean short relative to something like Excel, Quicken, and other business/professional software.

I agree with longer, better, beta...of course I'll be pre-ordering soon..

I have reconsidered my answer re: the extended dev cycle.

I think a better option might be to continue with the February release date beta cycle, then around December evaluate and at that point ask "Can we release the game that we want in two months?" "Are there a lot of new ideas that we have gotten from the community from the betas so far that extending the development cycle to August is going to be worthwhile?" All software projects will grow to fill the available time to release, my change of heart is that it might be best to keep the beta schedule as is at least for a few months of beta, with the comfortable knowledge that the option to extend is there.

As I said in my previous post, I don't think that to us as testers it makes a terrible lot of difference because we are going to have "the current product" in hand in February one way or the other, and the decision whether that is the release date of not is really a financial and an internal "is it ready" gut check for you guys.

I still love the idea of additional months to shape the game and possibly even get some beta user generated stuff included in the "canon" version - which unless y'all are completely against doing it, I think extending to August makes that much more likely to happen. On the other hand if come January, you feel and we feel that the game is functionally complete and just needs some polish - then it seems it would not make sense to postpone for six months just because you can, and I think that now (pre-alpha) is not the time to make that call.

Unless you are planning on pushing every phase back - such as the phase when tactical combat gets added, etc. If you are needing to make those kinds of schedule decisions NOW then my inclination is to go for the August release date. It really seems like different phases of beta need to be milestone determined (since time is not an over-riding factor)

So I would take your two possible schedules listed in the OP. Then I would say, The milestones we need to reach before going from Beta 1 to Beta 2 are that we are absolutely solid on x,y, and z. And then start beta 2 when those milestones are met. If the milestone/reality matches the original beta schedule then you will know you are on track for the February release. If the various milestones you set are much later than the original schedule, then you will know that August is the better choice.

The mailboy's remark here was the first one that made me question my longstanding no-wine-before-its-time position about dev scheds (for all software, actually, not just this project). But then I remembered that Sins is one of those 'real-time' thingies with a strong multiplayer focus and I started remembering just how long I've seen very involved-seeming posts about GalCiv2 from WIlly...

You're kidding, right ? Sins has one of the weakest multiplayers I've ever seen for an RTS. Go to the forums, there are a ton a people complaining about how very few people play online. At peak time there's about 150 people online

Here are my 2 thoughts:

1) If the betas are extended, it might be possible to do some serious modding in that period of time. Considering that modding is a big goal for this game, it would be possible to do some stress testing in that regard. If you guys, the devs, were to come along and show us the basics of modding, and a number of cool tricks, it might help us to find some bugs, and to inspire you guys to add more cool stuff.

2) Perhaps instead of extending the individual betas, you add in new phases. For instance, you could repeat the first batch of phases again to double check to see if everything is in order.

A new phase type could be the modding phase. At this phase, the mods from the community would be your only concern. You could write a lot of material regarding "getting started" and "how to do some cool stuff". You could also look at the suggestions of what the community would like to be able to add, and see what you guys could to do make it work.

Another phase could be the magic phase. You could worry about the kinds of magics the players would use, if and how players could develop new spells in game, and what kind of creatures they could make.

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I may come back later with more ideas.

Most games these days would benefit from a longer testing/beta phase, so if you can handle that financially:

Chalk me up in the "Definately yes" camp.

The fact that we get to play the game before release invalidates any complaints. Once again, DO IT! This game has so much potential that it would be an absolute shame to pass up a chance to stun the gaming world with an incredible masterpiece. 

It doesn't really work that way, though. If you're planning on a February release, you need to have a feature list that you know you can do by then. The issue is that with that February release, that feature list may not be as extensive and "awesome" as if the game was slated for a later launch, giving them more time for the planned good stuff.

It's not really as simple as "well just stick with February, and then decide". A lot of wheels start rolling early (press, retailer contracts, etc) and the release date would be more or less locked in probably a couple months before, which would only give until December/January to figure out if they should delay, which isn't a whole lot of time from September's start of beta.

Honestly, the Sins beta lasted for several months longer than if Elemental would launch in February, and even though it came out extremely polished, there was still no time for things like a better diplomacy system. Elemental is already a more complex game in some respects, and with a shorter beta period it may end up lacking a lot of "oompfth". I have no doubt it would be a good game, but it has a much higher potential to truly stand out if the beta lasts longer.

As long as I've pre-ordered this is no probøem at all. The only downside is i have to wait longer to play online with my non pre-ordring friends....

But do i understand it correctly, is beta1 in august after the alpha? Does that mean all pre-orders can start beta testing in august already?

NB! Let's hope the release in august 2010 won't collide with the release of Civilization V then.....

IMO, as long as possible without letting the technology on which the game engine is built become obsolete. As long as by the release date the game doesn't look like it is outdated (mostly graphically), I would say... Carry on development!

Also, those things on the top of the monther are definately trees. If you look, there are at least 2 other trees further on the thing's back. It looks like one of WoW's creatures on growth hormones... http://www.wowwiki.com/Bog_beast

Edit: Also, make absolutely sure that if you do interviews with game magazines (previews and such) to include a short snippet informing the readers that they can get into the open betas if they pre-order.

No, I wasn't kidding, but I'm very poorly informed on account of being one of those folks who goes away promptly after reading "real-time." I have an apparently-misguided impression that all so-called RTS games are built for multiplayer, but I also never play FPS games so I could easily be confusing how the two have left rancid peanut-butter in my chocolate or vice versa.