I don't know whether hotseat play is planned and unavailable in the beta or not planned at all, but it would really be useful for testing.

I mean right now there's no point in doing anything but buffing your channeler and slaughtering the ai with him single handedly. It works, is easy and quite pointless. Other ways to win are going to be as easy and therefore as pointless. There's no way we can test game balance or gameplay besides quests without either a half decent ai or multiplayer.

Multiplayer by looking for someone on the web in a beta is unreliable, to be nice. Furthermore, when I want to test stuff, I'd rather have the other player cooperate, which is best done if that other player is me. Which means hotseat.