Hmm, well do we have an IRC channel for the beta? Thats usually a good way to get to know people and if you want to use vent I'm sure someone in there has access to one.

You could always create their impulse accounts for them and login to setup their beta status. Then when they are ready to play, give them their login info.

I've made 2 pre-orders for SD products in the past, and I was told via IRC that you should contact sales support and have one of them canceled, then 'gift' the pre-order to a friend.   In the case of 3, you'd cancel 2 of them and make 2 gifts.

It would be really cool (possible unrealistic though) if an IRC (or some other form of chat) client could be built into the game interface itself.  Would be a nice option to be able to chat about your game while playing, ask for advice, etc, without the disjoint experience of having to play in a window or constantly alt-tab.

Depending on how things are set up, I could see this either being pretty easy or incredibly hard, though - (Although if it could be set up as the backend to whatever communications system was set up for normal multiplayer it might not be that bad - especially if there's some open source IRC code that could be used under a commercial-friendly license)

I'm not a big fan of windowed mode, even though I generally do run on a very large monitor...  I just find everything else on the screen to be distracting in a way that it wouldn't be if the communication didn't involve a need to context shift out of the game.

Grrr.  The gift pre-orders went through already and they aren't even as excited as me, and my pre-order isn't here yet.

That's awesome Kryo - I don't think I ever noticed it in Demigod... (then again, I spend much much more time on the turn based games)