So two dozen people that have the inside track +~76 others... hopefully the people that are active on the forums own at least some of the other games - we ALL own GC or GC2 amirite? Are there even 76 active people on the forums? (In the EWOM sections?) I think all of our chances are pretty good...

As bad as I want in to alpha, it hopefully won't be too long until beta which will probably be MUCH better anyway. Just hope those that do get into alpha post TONS of info for those who don't!

edit: regarding the thumbnail - it looks like a giant vulture with two heads and humanoid legs to me...

Hand delivered by BoogieMac on gold-foil embossed vellum scrolls.

Sammual 

I think only the two dozen pre-selected people will get any weight from the forum activity.  The other spots are from the pre-order pool w/ extra weight for other Stardock game purchases.  I would be interested to see how many active Elemental forum member there are and where they would place themselves in a list.... Hmm. Time to post a new thread!

Sammual

I've not followed a Stardock dev project from this early a stage, so I'm curious about how the NDAs will affect info flow from the volunteers. If anyone was around for early GC2 or even GC1, can you let us know whether the alpha volunteers will be able to type much about their experience? (That is if they can even tear themselves away from the build itself!)

Have they actually said it'll be NDA'd? I know Frogboy long ago mentioned that there would be an invite-only closed test under NDA, but seems plans have been changing a bit since then so I'm not sure if the alpha will be under an NDA or not.

In any case, those under NDA basically can't say anything that hasn't been said already by someone from Stardock. In the latest games, these closed tests weren't actually announced to the public so the selected testers weren't actually allowed to even mentioned that it existed. But if the alpha will be under NDA, obviously that probably won't need to be the case since everyone knows about it.

Pretty much for that reason I doubt that there will be an NDA just for the alpha. SD tends to want to let them stick, as in they don't lift them after the game's release, even. And Yarlen and Zoomba get a little cranky when people break them

Sadly, I don't think there's any way I could prove it. I'm pretty sure I bought the game off the shelf at a Software Etc or some such and the original game box is long gone at this point. I remember buying OS2/Warp just for that game. That's the only thing I ever used it for, though it was worth it. Many a hour were lost to that, um, we'll call it GalCiv Classic since GalCiv I is actually the 2nd iteration.

When he just got it he made a post on the forums wondering how long it'd take you to notice that he ripped it off of yours

Nah-uh!

(sings) I've got a golden ticket (chorus) He's got a golden ticket.... break out the Wonka bars...

I recall we once had a similar discussion

Now we see the nerds coming out....

As much as I support that because it makes for better testing, having 76 lottery-picked folks is no guarantee of success. A more strict QA-like system would work wonders for an entirely hand-picked team because presumably SD would pick the people they knew would take it seriously. But when you have that many more randomly-picked people than hand-picked, it's more of a coin toss on how it'd go

Spartan's bit we both quoted, and your pitch for trying it for Elemental

Well, he did say an "organized bug list"

As for the plan - it does take effort to set up, and it requires much more frequent and detailed communication between the testers and the dev team. And if they're going to do that, why would they gamble on how many people would be actively involved in the plan? The most sensible thing to do in such a case it to just hand-pick everyone that you know is going to be with it. It's true that those who don't might still be beneficial to the test, but then that's what the later betas will be for.