Any news about the next beta version?

Is there a beta out out today (ie thursday afternoon/evening US eastern time). Thursdays tend to be the beta release days in the past i've noticed.

I hope there is a beta later today cause I am about to take 2 midterm tests. Coming home after that to a new beta would be great cause right now in my Eve account the game hates me cause I can't make good money for the moment so BRING ON THE BETA WOOOHOOO! Hope I survive.

Still no news?

I'm starting to feel forgotten about.

I need a hug.   

How about this:   

Earth to Stardock... anyone there?

kryo, cari, brad... anyone?

Would knowing now really affect your life that much?

Could be spending time doing more constructive things rather than reading this site hoping for a response... yes.   

I think it’s time for a little Old Fart Wisdom. In my 22 years in the consulting industry, I have never seen a customer-relations situation handled in quite this manner. Sure, I’ve seen this type of situation arise before, I’ve even Caused this type of situation. I’ve never seen anyone handle it with such a……non-standard……approach.

As an example, it is not uncommon for us to provide our Clients with 30%, 60%, and 90% review copies of our deliverables. Sometimes, in out haste, we may forget to include a drawing, or an appendix, or some such item. As soon as we discover our error, we contact out Client: “Hey, we forgot to include the 1st Floor Structural Drawings. If you can wait until next week, we’ll get them to you.” The Client may not be overjoyed to hear this, but they can review the rest of the deliverable for a few days. I can assure you, however, that the Client will be anxious to get those drawings in the 10:00am Monday FedEx delivery. It would never occur to me to take this approach:

“Well, since this was the 60% submittal, I think I’ll just wait until the 90% submittal to give these drawings to the Client.” Even if I did think of this unique solution, I very seriously doubt that I would also think to tell the anxious Client (after a week has passed, and the drawings have not been delivered), that our staff is taking some second-rate holiday off, and the next submittal will be delayed. The sheer ingenuity of this is astounding. Now the Client has forgotten all about the missing drawings! They’re focused on the next submittal!

But wait, it gets even better! An entire team of our best engineers couldn’t come up with this! Even our polyester-clad marketing VP would be humbled:

While our Wary Client is still seething over our failure to deliver the above items, why not promise to do something else, and back out of that promise too! And when they notice that we have not delivered on our promise, and start to complain about it, We Ignore Them!

Seriously, you folks could have handled this situation much better that you have. This doesn’t even happen in Dilbert.

~in his most Stardockian authoritative voice~ There shal not be a beta patch today.

Believe that, or just assume there is no beta tonight and be surprised whenever it does come. Turn on SDC tomorrow morning and see if it came... This may also just be my stance on Thursday releases as Thursday's are booked for my attention to other things lol.

Your here posting, in the same thread as I am waiting for the beta. Where both in the same boat although I don't think you realise it. Your advice to me is contrary to your actions.

anyway back to waiting...

@OldFartAtPlay

I don't believe your analogy would fit this situation very well. In your analogy, the thing you are working on is a product requested by the customer to build. Perhaps I missed the petition to make Stardock create another expansion, but I believe it was their own initiative to do it.

From what I've seen about TA in the past few months, this is how it went down:

-Hey galactic civ fans, we decided to make another expansion to the game.
-Hey, if you wish to pre-order the expansion, you can knock off $5 from the price.
-Just a FYI, to all those that have/will pre-order, you'll get to beta test the game.

As far as I can discern, they didn't need to include that last part if they didn't want to. People had already pre-ordered the game knowing it was currently in Alpha/Beta stage and possibly not going to hit the target release date.

I'm killing time until those things come to be...which incidentally is about at the same time of the day the patch would be released.

@OldFartAtPlay
Unfortunately your post shows to me, that you have a wrong understanding of a development version being tagged beta. Seriously, a rather prefer a "its done when its done" approach. The developers are not obliged to any schedule for betas, as long as customers, who prepaid TA, get the release version.
See it as a nice feature that they put up their many betas, which is better than some other companies, charging people for their "release-beta", and again for a definate addon to reach release quality and features.
This way assures good and even very stable betas.
Would the questioning stop, if the where an official announcement saying "not today maybe tomorrow" ? They may have to sort out a problem, and they simply cant really tell when it is sorted out. Just be patient
But yes, it is "a...non-standard...approach"

Of course not, and no one should wrongly infer that the waiting makes me angry with Stardock.

Having said that, reasonable men gather expectations based on prior performance and it is reasonable and valid to rely on precedent. The silence IS deafening.

I don't begrudge them taking the time to get this right. I'm thankful for it. I would, however, appreciate a bit more communication. It'd only take five minutes to say "we haven't forgotten about this, we're working on it, here's our best estimate as to when we'lll have the next beta out". If they had some more specific information on what they are busy working on that'd be even better. We (the customers) voted overwhelmingly when they had the poll that we'd rather they take more time and get this right, I personally feel that they are basing basing their development schedule on that understanding of what their customer base wants. This probably had the effect of pushing TA development into the Sins release, which also demands their attention, so it could be a while. Fine.

But where are you guys? Are you ok? Everything alright? Please let us know what's going on here.

I'm just trying to goad someone from StarDock into posting something. Anything.

Now, it is obvious to Me that I was hinting that StarDock should either do what they promised to do, or provide some type of statement that communicates their intent to give us an update on their current schedule to keep us informed on any future plans to do what they promised to do in the first place. I apologize if I failed to effectively communicate that subtile intent in a sufficiently obvious manner.

lol, wow your post was incredibly subtle. Nice to know your one of us though.

Stardock a choir is forming...

well they`ll tell us soon what is going on !!

Feels about as likely as asking God for a sign and being given one at the moment but I admire your optimism. Is kryo working today or did he catch brads flu, or is he out of the loop on the beta schedule anyway I wonder.

I asked in the SD Central chat earlier, Carielf said that if it's not out by 5pm, it won't be out today.

Well, it's nice to know they are still alive. I hadn't seen any Stardock posting over on the GalCiv boards all day.

I wouldn't have ruled out an issue with their ISP...

thx 4info rls699.

is that 5 pm eastern 5 pm pacific?

I say there time and it is 6:38PM there(eastern)