, davewill wrote

*snip*

It would be very constructive to have seen how the development was handled leading up to release.

well I can tell you this:

I was in on the first "beta" they did, here is how that went:

started Friday ended Sunday night.

each player was only allowed 1 hour and then had to start a new city.

not all game features were allowed.

it was the same city - the map area was set, no options to get other maps.

it had server issues until mid Saturday / or that evening.

given the start and end times plus the un playable state for the first 20-30 hours it was really a 30 hour test when it should have been 72 hours.

and given that you could really only do the same city each time I bet many folks got bored and stopped after a few runs.

how much of a test was that ?  I think it was more of a marketing game, give a sample and at then end of each game they were doing adverts to pre order the game.

they had a second round beta that I think was the same as the first one.