With the August 7th date quickly approaching, we wanted to give you guys a quick update on some important points of note. We have noticed some wide-ranging discussion on the forums as to what exactly will be happening on August 7th, and we are pleased to share the official rollout plans.

Firstly, it's important to reiterate that the standard retail ALPHA/BETA definitions do not necessarily apply to online Free to Play (F2P) games. MechWarrior Online will always be in development, which means exciting new features and content will roll out frequently. As you know, we have yet to announce hard dates for Open Beta or our official Live date. Our goal has always been to achieve Open Beta status before the end of summer.

What will happen on August 7th? Great question!

All Founder's Program members will be granted access to all of their Founder's perks and rewards.

So basically:

• Beta access (granted with any Founder's program)
• Founder's Tag (granted instantly)
• Premium account^*
• In-game currency^**
• Founder's Mechs for Elite and Legendary Founders
• The Founders Program "Credits" and "In Game Currency / MC" are ready for you to spend at will.
  Important: You will be refunded the entire amount each time we patch the game during Closed Beta & once again when we commence the Open Beta.

Once all Founder's Members are in the Open Beta, your premium account bonuses will be treated as "live" and any MC used will be permanently spent.

Please Note:

^* The premium account grants you 50% more XP and C-Bills. Even though you will get those benefits while the duration of Closed Beta, the REAL clock will only begin at Open Beta where there will be a final reset of all accounts so everyone starts at the same level.

^** In game currency will be reset and re-injected at every reset until Open Beta. This means you can experiment and spend it all with no worries as it will be given back to you on the final reset of Open Beta.

How long will the Founder's Program be on sale?

Due to recent overwhelming demand, the Founder's Program will continue to be made available beyond August 7th. Cut-off timing for the Founder's Program offer will be announced at a later date.

The game is currently in Closed Beta, what does this mean?

• Ancillary features are done.
• New features are being added.
• New content is added on a regular basis.
• Access to MechWarrior Online is by invitation only.
• All purchases are tracked and will be credited to a player's account when Open Beta starts. (Example: If you purchase 5,000 MC during Closed Beta, your account will be credited with 5,000 MC once Open Beta begins.)
• Data is reset regularly.
• Balance and tuning are extensive and regular.
• Lots of bugs.

Once we announce we are in Open Beta (Date TBD), what will change?

• The game is 95% stable.
• New features are still being added.
• New content is added on a regular basis.
• Final data reset.
• Balance and tuning are still happening regularly in response to scaling up the user base.

As mentioned above, terms like "Release" or "Live" are hard to determine with a Free to Play game like MechWarrior Online, however you may consider the game "Live" when:

• The game is stable.
• New features are grouped into more formal releases.
• New content is added on a regular basis.
• Unrestricted public access to the game.
• Ongoing tuning and minor bug fixing.

We hope this clarifies things a little more and gives you a bit more information on the different milestones we are trying to achieve. Until next time, happy gaming!