There will be the public beta for anyone who preorder the game. First beta will be available in the spring.

oh yeah, and bears are awesome  (unless you are among the few that don't like bears.  Which is ok.  Its the thought that counts, and thats a theme of the forum)

I'm pretty sure it says there will be a beta clearly somewhere other than the forums too.    Try the search feature before posting.  It is your friend and helps prevent duplicate threads. (note:  check the date to prevent necro posting if you are going to reply)

re searching, you can also just add site:forums.elementalgame.com to the end of your string at Google or any other decent engine.

I know there is a planned beta in spring.

I am just lobbying for an earlier one.

I wanted to, but I prefer to use Paypal so I will wait until nearer the time.

I don't mind pre-ordering by card if the payment will go through ASAP.

Also I am hoping to get some Karma so I can join the Beta 0 ...

heck...if we are giving out Karma and that is needed to be in beta...memememememe!  (Jumping up and down)

I think they use karma to get a list of people that might get in to early beta, then they actually see what those people have done for the community. It's not like there is going to be an automated "if you have over X karma you're in". And there probably won't be a lot of them either, only a select few.

Since negative karma isn't allowed here, a karma score is just an indication that people think you have "done good". This can be something as simple as making them laugh. If Stardock is serious about any sort of "screening" then actual post content will probably count for more.

Don't worry about qualifying for anything, just contributing another unique mind to the conversation by getting involved improves the community as a whole.

I think such an early beta will be an 'unfun' version of the game.

The thing with open betas is that they also have a word of mouth advertising impact. So the developers have to take some time to polish them before releases, otherwise you will have some people telling everyone how bad the game is, because the beta does not meet their expectations.

What I'm getting at is, if there are some features they want tested early by a variety of people on many machines distributed across t'internet, and they are going to release a rougher sort of public beta, then there is good reason for them to be more selective.

The point of a beta is to let monkeys loose upon its workings so that they break it. Then the angry monkeys yell at the developers about how things are broken and they get fixed.

The end result is hopefully a good game. Also bananas.

Not forgetting the long arguments about what the monkeys think that is broken and the devs don't agree with.

Also, bananas are in the collector's edition.

WHAT ARE U TALKING ABOUT... (relax... kill kitties...) I enjoy betas and killing bugs and finding them, also looking for typos... XP, and playing early is great!