I respect your post but your wrong on every sinhgle point. I have beta tested almost every major release since eq1. There is no beta test that has lasted 7 months except for wow. Most games are in beta well over a year and sometimes in the case of games like shadowbane 2-3 years. Yes swg was released a year early and had less than a year beta and yes wow is the one exception. You could point to L2 having only a 5 month beta but the game was released 9 months earlier in korea which had a much longer beta test there prior to that. Most games betas are well beyond a year. Look at eq1, daoc, ao, ac, ac2, and so on. GM''s are hired for betas. It is the 1st thing a game does before sending out beta applications. Hype and marketing goes on well before release and it does not cost them money. Well not much money. Marketing and hype are done by releasing information to newsites and forums. Slowly building up anticipation and hype. Release dates and beta hints are all about marketing as well. We are not talking small companies here we are talking mega m,assive corporations that spend 20-40 millon dollars up front developing thier games. They are not stupid. Marketing of a game does not start just before release as you suggest. Rather every step from the 1st announcement of development to release dates, to beta hints, to released game information is finely calculated to grow the fanbase, grow anticpation and make every fanboy want to kill to play thier game. Don't be naive. I could go on. But its failrly pointless. Rather I would just say I respect your opinion but your completely wrong on every point. You can believe the hype and the fantasy or you can look at the track record of every game that has been released and form the conclusion that announced release dates are never even close to the actual release date. Best of luck and see you in game in December 2007, Zippy
SWG beta was not released 'a year early'. It was released right on schedule. The problem was that the game wasn't remotely ready for the release. I don't know about Shadowbane, or L2. But the other games you listed didn't even approach a 1 year beta period. EQ, specifically, I know with absolute certainty was 9 months. Brad McQuaid has referenced the fact that he though that the 9 month beta period for EQ was just about perfect. And that in threads regarding player concerns that the beta period wouldn't be long enough, and that 9 months was good (read as longer than most).
Yes, GM's job req's are sent out right before beta. It only makes sense. Which suggests that we're on the verge of beta. Couple that with Brad's statement that 9 months beta is about perfect, and you're looking at beta really soon, lasting somewhere around 9 months, which puts release late summer `06. Personally, I bet they would like to hit release at E3 next year. But that might be a little optomistic.
Hype goes on well before release, mainly in the form of dev interviews, screenshot releases, and word of mouth within the community. Marketing doesn't really ramp up until the game is... marketable. Advertising, endorsements, etc, don't start happening till the months right before release, well into the beta phases.
I am basing my opinions on the track record of MMO releases. Going back to UO. And on participation in multiple betas, and in multiple pre-release communitites. And with daily interaction with a large local gaming community (3 buddies/coworkers also own a gaming center), and are involved with twice the beta's I've been in. I'm not just making this up.
Its hard to argue with fanboys. All these betas lasted well over a year. Maybe you were not persoanlly in beta a year but all thesse betas were well in excess of a year. The only one I do not know for sure is Eve.
I give up make up what you want and believe what you want. I was attempting to offer you some realism.
Either way best of luck and see you Christmas 2007.
Originally posted by Zippy Its hard to argue with fanboys. ... I give up make up what you want and believe what you want. I was attempting to offer you some realism. Either way best of luck and see you Christmas 2007.
Sorry, but you are wrong, sigil started to hire game masters a couple of weeks ago, probably the beta will start beteween august and october. In my opinion will start in mid september, and the game will be launched in june or july 06.
I dont know if you are following brad's post in vanguard forums, but at this moment it's pretty obvious that beta is almost ready. As far as i know, other than icons for the interface, character customization, motion capture, underwater shaders and other minor details, vanguard is ready for beta 1.
If you are so sure that we are wrong, get try to get something to back your claims, because we have gameplay screenshots, comunity leaders playing the game and watching it in the E3, dozens of dev's posts, E3 gameplay videos and a company hiring game masters.
Sorry, but you are wrong, sigil started to hire game masters a couple of weeks ago, probably the beta will start beteween august and october. In my opinion will start in mid september, and the game will be launched in june or july 06.
My apologies you are right. They posted on 6/2 a post to hire GM's. I still disgaree with you and think that September is a bit optimistic. Everything gets pushed back.
But there are lots of things I agree with you about. The game has a lot of features already in game according to dev posts. The number of posts and interaction by Brad in the forums is impressive as is the Vanguard community. The safehouse and silky venom E3 reports areamazing and I encourage anyone interested in Vanguard to read them.
I have a lot of hope that Vanguard will turn out to be the game we all have wanted for quite sometime.
The point I have made and will stick by is release dates and beta expectations never happen. Peronally, I also hope that release is delayed as long as possible. Games are released far to early. Hopefully Brad will learn from his eq1 release and release VG in a more stable shape. Back to the point at hand, no game ever has been released anywhere close to their release date they have given and I see no reason why Vanguard will be the 1st to do so. Add in the new features such as diplomacy, ship battles, unique turn based crafting system, perctions, mage counter spells, advanced encounter system, lack of instances, armor and weapons for all 4 spheres, travel being meaningfull, hard and fun and it will take quite sometime to see what actually works. What doesn't works. What needs to be changed. Then add in the preliminary class list of 16 classes. They need to be developed, skills needs to fleshed out and tweaked, they all need to be balanced. Then there are secondary skills each character obtains.
They have a lot more to do than a cookie cutter with 5-8 classes has to do in beta and the same ruleset that has worked for every game. If they were doing a game like ddo that is entirely ionstanced that would be easier. But they are not they are appealing to hardcore players and adverising lots of unquie untried features that need to be tested tweaked, balanced, tweaked, replaced. If they want a complete game they cannot do this in the normal one year+ beta.
If the game is really this good I am willing to wait. My orginal point is game companies never come close to meeting deadlines and don't expect Vanguard to be the first one to do so.
optimistic? not really, one month to get resumes, another one to select who is going to be game master and another one of formation. If the begining of the beta is delayed further than september sigil will be wasting resources(their game masters), so in my opinion mid september is a pretty safe date.
They have a lot more to do than a cookie cutter with 5-8 classes has to do in beta and the same ruleset that has worked for every game. If they were doing a game like ddo that is entirely ionstanced that would be easier. But they are not they are appealing to hardcore players and adverising lots of unquie untried features that need to be tested tweaked, balanced, tweaked, replaced. If they want a complete game they cannot do this in the normal one year+ beta.
if sigil developers weren't as experienced as they are, i could agree with you, but sigil's team is one of the most prepared mmorpg developing teams, full with talent and knowledge. Yes, they will make mistakes, i have no doubts about this, but if their alpha is as stable as it seems in the screenshots and gameplay videos, vanguard first beta will be about gameplay so sigil will get good feedback from day one.
Are 9 months enough to have a flawless release? no way, but is enough to have a game with proved game mechanics and without major bugs or stabilitly issues.
Originally posted by n2sooners Originally posted by Zippy If they want a complete game they cannot do this in the normal one year+ beta.
What normal 1yr+ beta??? There is absolutely nothing normal about beta testing for more than a year for MMORPGs.
Expect beta to start in the last quarter of this year and the game to go live this time next year. This company makes SOE and Blizzard look like noobs when it comes to designing games. Expect something special and professional.
Nice Billie!!...These screenshots show the game is already comming quite nicely
I think Sigil made a good decision using an already existing engine for Vanguard....I am not sure which engine of Unreal they used, but definitley not the Unreal Engine 3...its way too advanced.
Anyway love the screens....thanks for the links
I hope there will be a way to be accepted to take part in a beta, I would be so happy, obviously I would act seriously about it aswell...seing that its a beta not a demo.
Min Specs. "What was quoted" "as me saying a year ago I stand behind again today. I won't talk about specs specifically until we truly have to, and that will be when beta is underway and I need to let people know what range of hardware they will need in order to participate. And then later, when the NDA drops and also faster hardware is available and hopefully our game all the more optimized, we'll publicly talk about min specs for the public beta. And then, yes, finally, min specs will be printed somewhere on the Vanguard box, probably using terms like minimum and recomended, and we'll do our best to be honest about all of that." Brad McQuaid
Will you aim for lower end systems though so the game still looks great and runs smooth for the majority of the players? "You can bet there will be enough options to allow the game to run "smooth as silk" on the majority of systems out there. At the same time, there will be enough options that when you DO get that Uber Hot system the game improves right along with it.
One main issue with simply upgrading the graphics engine" (unreal2.5) "every few months is that you tend to reset the "bugometer" every time you make such a drastic change to the code. Leaving a flexible but stable code base with very MINOR tweaks to the engine allows more people to play it, find the bugs, and get them fixed while at the same time allowing both the "budget" computer and the "uber" computer to run the same game. EverQuest runs on my daughter's 850mHz 256M system just like it does on my 3.0gHz 3Gig system... it's just a different look." - Ryan Elam, Lead Programmer
Abigale Seashadow : Well, the time has finally come! We are about to enter our first stage of Beta!
Beta 0 (also commonly known as Friends & Family Beta) is about to begin. This first phase is comprised of a very small group of players that are selected from among people we know personally and know very well.
As we progress into other phases of Beta and are ready to start selecting participants from among our community members, we will let you know right here in this forum. When we are ready to move into each phase and begin taking applications, you will hear it here first! (2 July, 2005) ---------------------------
Hey all! As we approach Beta and release, you will see a number of changes taking place around here. I wanted to point out a couple of those changes today.
The first change you will notice is that our Game Design section of the forums has been renamed. Instead, we now have the Game Play section which has 4 sub-categories: General Game Play discussion and a section dedicated to each sphere. Our community is growing rapidly now and so we are trying to organize things a little better.
The second change is the addition of a new Beta forum. This section is only open to registered members of our community. Once you are logged in, you will have access to this section. Here, we will keep you updated and make announcements.
We are all very busy here and working hard to get us into Beta. Thank you all for your continued feedback and support. We look forward to seeing many of you in Beta soon ! __________________ Cindy Bowens (aka Abigale Seashadow) Community Manager Sigil Games Online ------------------------------------
Sneak peak at SoH
Join us in Las Vegas on July 29-30th for (the 3rd) Fanguard and get a sneak peek at Vanguard, meet our team and a chance to win great prizes!
We will start the event with a private party at Planet Hollywood . Youll join us for food and drinks and meet and get acquainted with our team. On Saturday, you can see a demo of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and meet team members for discussions and feedback. Then we will all meet at Game Works for some food, fun and games! And we will end it all by giving away some great prizes, including signed concept art and Beta spots!
And thats not all! In the gaming industrys first cattle call, we will be interviewing as many of you as we can for future positions here at Sigil! We will have our team on site to interview for positions including Associate Designers, Programmers, Artists and Game Masters! We have lots of positions to fill in the coming months and wed like the chance to hear from our community members that are interested in joining our team.
So join us in Las Vegas for a weekend of fun with your fellow gamers! It will be the first of many times we all travel to meet our Vanguard friends!
Space is limited so register soon! ... the website told me there were no rooms, but when telephoned and they were perfectly happy to book as part of the Sigil group with the $79 rate (thursday through sunday.) -------- fyi: FYI.... TAXICAB FARES AND FEES The Las Vegas valley is serviced by 16 taxicab companies. When you enter a taxicab, the driver will start the taximeter (referred to as the drop) and an initial charge of $3.20 will register. If you are picked up at McCarran International Airport, an additional airport surcharge of $1.20 per trip will be added to the taximeter. After the initial drop the taximeter will assess a fare of $1.80 per mile (20¢ for each 1/9th of a mile traveled). If the taximeter senses that the taxicab is moving less than 8-12 MPH, the taximeter will assess a charge of 20¢ every 33 seconds. That is why the taximeter continues to accumulate charges even when the taxicab is not moving. Once the taximeter senses that the cab is moving greater than 8-12 MPH the fare is calculated on the actual distance traveled.
Equates to around 14 bucks one way. Unless one calls the Hilton and arranges a shuttle from the airport. Originally Posted by Abigale Seashadow Just wanted to let you guys know that there is a free shuttle from Emerald Suites to the Sahara and Mandalay Bay. You can catch the monorail at either of those hotels.
That's how I got around when I went to check things out for this event. Cabs, shuttles and monorails. I ended up walking a couple of blocks here and there but it wasn't too bad. --------
paraphrase Abi's statement from the announcement:And we will end it all by giving away some great prizes, including signed concept art and Beta spots .
-------- edit: 1st Fanguard 7 May 2004. 2nd Fanguard 18 Oct. 2004, TEN beta accounts given away with NDA. 3rd Fanguard 29 July 2005, more beta accounts tba.
You could point to L2 having only a 5 month beta but the game was released 9 months earlier in korea which had a much longer beta test there prior to that. Most games betas are well beyond a year. Look at eq1, daoc, ao, ac, ac2, and so on.
No, this is not a correct account for at least 2 of these games, I was in full beta for AC (under 1 year in all beta stages) did not like AC so didn't beta AC2, and EQ was not a full year from beta to release. daoc took well over 12 months ( think it was closer to 18 for beta) and I believe in an exception to this stage of development.
Comments
SWG beta was not released 'a year early'. It was released right on schedule. The problem was that the game wasn't remotely ready for the release. I don't know about Shadowbane, or L2. But the other games you listed didn't even approach a 1 year beta period. EQ, specifically, I know with absolute certainty was 9 months. Brad McQuaid has referenced the fact that he though that the 9 month beta period for EQ was just about perfect. And that in threads regarding player concerns that the beta period wouldn't be long enough, and that 9 months was good (read as longer than most).
Yes, GM's job req's are sent out right before beta. It only makes sense. Which suggests that we're on the verge of beta. Couple that with Brad's statement that 9 months beta is about perfect, and you're looking at beta really soon, lasting somewhere around 9 months, which puts release late summer `06. Personally, I bet they would like to hit release at E3 next year. But that might be a little optomistic.
Hype goes on well before release, mainly in the form of dev interviews, screenshot releases, and word of mouth within the community. Marketing doesn't really ramp up until the game is... marketable. Advertising, endorsements, etc, don't start happening till the months right before release, well into the beta phases.
I am basing my opinions on the track record of MMO releases. Going back to UO. And on participation in multiple betas, and in multiple pre-release communitites. And with daily interaction with a large local gaming community (3 buddies/coworkers also own a gaming center), and are involved with twice the beta's I've been in. I'm not just making this up.
-Feyshtey-
Its hard to argue with fanboys. All these betas lasted well over a year. Maybe you were not persoanlly in beta a year but all thesse betas were well in excess of a year. The only one I do not know for sure is Eve.
I give up make up what you want and believe what you want. I was attempting to offer you some realism.
Either way best of luck and see you Christmas 2007.
Sorry, but you are wrong, sigil started to hire game masters a couple of weeks ago, probably the beta will start beteween august and october. In my opinion will start in mid september, and the game will be launched in june or july 06.
I dont know if you are following brad's post in vanguard forums, but at this moment it's pretty obvious that beta is almost ready. As far as i know, other than icons for the interface, character customization, motion capture, underwater shaders and other minor details, vanguard is ready for beta 1.
If you are so sure that we are wrong, get try to get something to back your claims, because we have gameplay screenshots, comunity leaders playing the game and watching it in the E3, dozens of dev's posts, E3 gameplay videos and a company hiring game masters.
What do you have to back your claims?
Originally posted by Gresteh
Sorry, but you are wrong, sigil started to hire game masters a couple of weeks ago, probably the beta will start beteween august and october. In my opinion will start in mid september, and the game will be launched in june or july 06.
My apologies you are right. They posted on 6/2 a post to hire GM's. I still disgaree with you and think that September is a bit optimistic. Everything gets pushed back.
But there are lots of things I agree with you about. The game has a lot of features already in game according to dev posts. The number of posts and interaction by Brad in the forums is impressive as is the Vanguard community. The safehouse and silky venom E3 reports areamazing and I encourage anyone interested in Vanguard to read them.
I have a lot of hope that Vanguard will turn out to be the game we all have wanted for quite sometime.
The point I have made and will stick by is release dates and beta expectations never happen. Peronally, I also hope that release is delayed as long as possible. Games are released far to early. Hopefully Brad will learn from his eq1 release and release VG in a more stable shape. Back to the point at hand, no game ever has been released anywhere close to their release date they have given and I see no reason why Vanguard will be the 1st to do so. Add in the new features such as diplomacy, ship battles, unique turn based crafting system, perctions, mage counter spells, advanced encounter system, lack of instances, armor and weapons for all 4 spheres, travel being meaningfull, hard and fun and it will take quite sometime to see what actually works. What doesn't works. What needs to be changed. Then add in the preliminary class list of 16 classes. They need to be developed, skills needs to fleshed out and tweaked, they all need to be balanced. Then there are secondary skills each character obtains.
They have a lot more to do than a cookie cutter with 5-8 classes has to do in beta and the same ruleset that has worked for every game. If they were doing a game like ddo that is entirely ionstanced that would be easier. But they are not they are appealing to hardcore players and adverising lots of unquie untried features that need to be tested tweaked, balanced, tweaked, replaced. If they want a complete game they cannot do this in the normal one year+ beta.
If the game is really this good I am willing to wait. My orginal point is game companies never come close to meeting deadlines and don't expect Vanguard to be the first one to do so.
optimistic? not really, one month to get resumes, another one to select who is going to be game master and another one of formation. If the begining of the beta is delayed further than september sigil will be wasting resources(their game masters), so in my opinion mid september is a pretty safe date.
if sigil developers weren't as experienced as they are, i could agree with you, but sigil's team is one of the most prepared mmorpg developing teams, full with talent and knowledge. Yes, they will make mistakes, i have no doubts about this, but if their alpha is as stable as it seems in the screenshots and gameplay videos, vanguard first beta will be about gameplay so sigil will get good feedback from day one.
Are 9 months enough to have a flawless release? no way, but is enough to have a game with proved game mechanics and without major bugs or stabilitly issues.
What normal 1yr+ beta??? There is absolutely nothing normal about beta testing for more than a year for MMORPGs.
What normal 1yr+ beta??? There is absolutely nothing normal about beta testing for more than a year for MMORPGs.
Expect beta to start in the last quarter of this year and the game to go live this time next year. This company makes SOE and Blizzard look like noobs when it comes to designing games. Expect something special and professional.
Make a difference!
"Not quite yet. These are pretty cool, though "(screenshots of the in-house beta.) "We've seriously begun in-house playtesting of beta 1 content, which is what these shots are from (a session today[12 June,] actually)." Aradune Mithra
SoH beta screenshot1
shot2
shot3
shot4
shot5
shot6
shot7
shot8
shot9
shot12
shot13
shot15
shot17
shot20
screenshot
lota screenshots
more shots
unreal 2 engine
unreal2x
Unreal 3
For those interested in more screenshots emailto:lharker@sigilgames.com to let him know how you feel.
Nice Billie!!...These screenshots show the game is already comming quite nicely
I think Sigil made a good decision using an already existing engine for Vanguard....I am not sure which engine of Unreal they used, but definitley not the Unreal Engine 3...its way too advanced.
Anyway love the screens....thanks for the links
I hope there will be a way to be accepted to take part in a beta, I would be so happy, obviously I would act seriously about it aswell...seing that its a beta not a demo.
system requirements
Min Specs. "What was quoted" "as me saying a year ago I stand behind again today. I won't talk about specs specifically until we truly have to, and that will be when beta is underway and I need to let people know what range of hardware they will need in order to participate. And then later, when the NDA drops and also faster hardware is available and hopefully our game all the more optimized, we'll publicly talk about min specs for the public beta. And then, yes, finally, min specs will be printed somewhere on the Vanguard box, probably using terms like minimum and recomended, and we'll do our best to be honest about all of that." Brad McQuaid
FFxi benchmark tool
In-game video recording tool fraps .
spec opinion
Will you aim for lower end systems though so the game still looks great and runs smooth for the majority of the players?
"You can bet there will be enough options to allow the game to run "smooth as silk" on the majority of systems out there. At the same time, there will be enough options that when you DO get that Uber Hot system the game improves right along with it.
One main issue with simply upgrading the graphics engine" (unreal2.5) "every few months is that you tend to reset the "bugometer" every time you make such a drastic change to the code. Leaving a flexible but stable code base with very MINOR tweaks to the engine allows more people to play it, find the bugs, and get them fixed while at the same time allowing both the "budget" computer and the "uber" computer to run the same game. EverQuest runs on my daughter's 850mHz 256M system just like it does on my 3.0gHz 3Gig system... it's just a different look." - Ryan Elam, Lead Programmer
Abigale Seashadow :
Well, the time has finally come! We are about to enter our first stage of Beta!
Beta 0 (also commonly known as Friends & Family Beta) is about to begin. This first phase is comprised of a very small group of players that are selected from among people we know personally and know very well.
As we progress into other phases of Beta and are ready to start selecting participants from among our community members, we will let you know right here in this forum. When we are ready to move into each phase and begin taking applications, you will hear it here first! (2 July, 2005)
---------------------------
Hey all!
As we approach Beta and release, you will see a number of changes taking place around here. I wanted to point out a couple of those changes today.
The first change you will notice is that our Game Design section of the forums has been renamed. Instead, we now have the Game Play section which has 4 sub-categories: General Game Play discussion and a section dedicated to each sphere. Our community is growing rapidly now and so we are trying to organize things a little better.
The second change is the addition of a new Beta forum. This section is only open to registered members of our community. Once you are logged in, you will have access to this section. Here, we will keep you updated and make announcements.
We are all very busy here and working hard to get us into Beta. Thank you all for your continued feedback and support. We look forward to seeing many of you in Beta soon !
__________________
Cindy Bowens (aka Abigale Seashadow)
Community Manager
Sigil Games Online
------------------------------------
Sneak peak at SoH
Join us in Las Vegas on July 29-30th for (the 3rd) Fanguard and get a sneak peek at Vanguard, meet our team and a chance to win great prizes!
We will start the event with a private party at Planet Hollywood . Youll join us for food and drinks and meet and get acquainted with our team. On Saturday, you can see a demo of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and meet team members for discussions and feedback. Then we will all meet at Game Works for some food, fun and games! And we will end it all by giving away some great prizes, including signed concept art and Beta spots!
And thats not all! In the gaming industrys first cattle call, we will be interviewing as many of you as we can for future positions here at Sigil! We will have our team on site to interview for positions including Associate Designers, Programmers, Artists and Game Masters! We have lots of positions to fill in the coming months and wed like the chance to hear from our community members that are interested in joining our team.
So join us in Las Vegas for a weekend of fun with your fellow gamers! It will be the first of many times we all travel to meet our Vanguard friends!
Space is limited so register soon!
... the website told me there were no rooms, but when telephoned and they were perfectly happy to book as part of the Sigil group with the $79 rate (thursday through sunday.)
--------
fyi:
FYI....
TAXICAB FARES AND FEES The Las Vegas valley is serviced by 16 taxicab companies. When you enter a taxicab, the driver will start the taximeter (referred to as the drop) and an initial charge of $3.20 will register. If you are picked up at McCarran International Airport, an additional airport surcharge of $1.20 per trip will be added to the taximeter. After the initial drop the taximeter will assess a fare of $1.80 per mile (20¢ for each 1/9th of a mile traveled). If the taximeter senses that the taxicab is moving less than 8-12 MPH, the taximeter will assess a charge of 20¢ every 33 seconds. That is why the taximeter continues to accumulate charges even when the taxicab is not moving. Once the taximeter senses that the cab is moving greater than 8-12 MPH the fare is calculated on the actual distance traveled.
Equates to around 14 bucks one way. Unless one calls the Hilton and arranges a shuttle from the airport.
Originally Posted by Abigale Seashadow
Just wanted to let you guys know that there is a free shuttle from Emerald Suites to the Sahara and Mandalay Bay. You can catch the monorail at either of those hotels.
That's how I got around when I went to check things out for this event. Cabs, shuttles and monorails. I ended up walking a couple of blocks here and there but it wasn't too bad.
--------
paraphrase Abi's statement from the announcement:And we will end it all by giving away some great prizes, including signed concept art and Beta spots .
--------
edit:
1st Fanguard 7 May 2004.
2nd Fanguard 18 Oct. 2004, TEN beta accounts given away with NDA.
3rd Fanguard 29 July 2005, more beta accounts tba.
Nice vegas fanguard writeups, a taste of what most serious mmorpg ers are drooling for in anticipation:
I
II
III
IV
V
edit: had to correct the silky venom link, their listing #s change daily.
ongoing beta
beta stages detailed.
Real SoH beta1 and beta2 some time away
EQ's beta lasted about 9 months.
I think Brad has said he would like to be in that range. Regardless, I think it would be a very tight fit to get it out by the end of the year.
I would expect an early Spring release for 2006 at this point.
At least that is my story and I am sticking to it.
VanBard for Vanguard: A Meeting Place for Bards in Vanguard.
No, this is not a correct account for at least 2 of these games, I was in full beta for AC (under 1 year in all beta stages) did not like AC so didn't beta AC2, and EQ was not a full year from beta to release. daoc took well over 12 months ( think it was closer to 18 for beta) and I believe in an exception to this stage of development.
I can't wait to get a beta invite!