#1 needed change: more beta patches less churn

I think we all agree there are a lot of changes needed and Stardock is doing a good job of quickly coming up with patches however this is causing some major problems.

- Patches causing backwards compatibility problems with previous saved games

- Redesigns are half baked and causing problems/confusion (movement changes, hiring npc change, etc)

- Quick turnaround is causing unforeseen bugs (archery not working in latest patch, etc)

- Proposed major changes are potential time bombs if they fail (magic revamp, champ revamp, etc)

In order to address these issues please implement a development/release strategy where a beta patch (like the multiplayer beta patch) is released every x days or weeks and a release patch is released every y weeks (obviously y > x).   As a developer I do realize that this causes more work and confusion in development but it protects the players which should be your number one concern.   Benefits of this are numerous but here are a few.

- Changes are baked in before they hit the release patch therefore significantly reducing the chances of game breaking bugs.

- PLAYERS CHOOSE THEIR RISK.   Want to play the latest and greatest and give feedback to help Stardock then play the beta patch at your own risk.   Want to just play a game without dealing with all of the almost daily drama play the release (i.e. stable) patch.

- Always a good playable game.   The archer problem in the current latest patch is a huge bug which since the patch was released on a Friday is taking several days to fix.   The game is broken now which is inexcusable for a released product.

-  Major revamps can be introduced early in the beta patch and players can test them out and provide valuable feedback much earlier.

- Shows off the power of the Impulse system since players can choose which version of the game they want

Most quality mmo have test servers simply because they change a live game.    It looks like with all the changes being proposed that this game is going to go through major changes (after being released) in the weeks ahead and I am worried the stability of the game will suffer.