Vincent Vascaul, on 02 May 2012 - 12:40 PM, said:
Nope.. it's in Friends and Family Beta..
Which from what we gather is somewhere between Alpha testing and Closed Beta.
From what I can deduce.. (Educated guesses based on comments from the Devs here, on twitter, facebook, etc.. , my previous Beta testing experiences... etc.. So take it for what its worth)
Alpha got to the point of the Mech mechanics to work and getting in the cockpit and getting the big Mechs to fight it out. (Pre-GDC)
Once they got that done and were out of GDC, they have been working on getting the GUI, Launcher, Patcher, Mech Lab, etc.. working
F&F Beta is to confirm all that works, and getting the core of the game and the GUI to about 90%
ALL that was done primarily on stations at PGI, with few players getting to play from outside the main offices.
Closed Beta will be getting the finishing touches on it, checking the network code, and letting some crazies on it to try to break it.. Be it by trying to run crazy control setups, trying to play on a number of different systems to see how that affects the game play / lag. etc.. This should be when they start looking for folks from around the world/country to do small stress tests on the network, etc.. (I'm guessing May-June time frame)
Open Beta will be stress testing, and making sure they do some final balancing and tweaking. ( If they are on schedule.. thinking by my Birthday.. 8-24 )