Beta 2 of Galactic Civilizations II should be available by 8pm EST to those who have PRE-ORDERED the game. But as a bonus (cough cough) you'll also get to beta test the new Stardock.net backend which is being prepped for TotalGaming.net Phase 2 which is due out next week.

You will be amongst the first (okay, the first) people to try out the new backend as you download the beta via Stardock Central.  Which means, naturally, it's probably not going to work right for many of you.  If you are one of the lucky winners of some weird download error, don't worry, we'll be working on this stuff tonight and tomorrow.  With any luck, hopefully it'll download fine for most of you.  The joys of distributed/secure network distribution.  It may not work right yet but it's really cool in theory! <g>.  For those of you it does work correctly for, you should be able to download it at very VERY high speeds (my Comcast connection was bringing it down at 500K per second).

If you do run into problems downloading it, go to the forums and I will be creating a topic there.  Remember, don't expect to see it until 8pm EST.