Oye. Pew.
Beta 1B, which will be out next Thursday, will be much much better. It'll still suck, but yikes.
So beta 1A does have a lot of new stuff in it but it's not well integrated yet. Beta 1B, the first economic build, will start to show the direction of the game is going.
Now, I've been getting email on when I think people should start making gameplay requests versus compatibility requests.
The answer to is the tail end of Beta 1 which will be around Thanksgiving. It's at that point that the game, while still primitive, should start coming together as an actual game as opposed to a bunch of loosely collected assets and techs put together.