Feldon 
If you feel that EQ2’s expansion betas have been unnecessarily long, we have some great news for you. For everyone else, prepare for a rather abrupt beta this time around. According to SmokeJumper, the Destiny of Velious beta will start “when we come back in 2011”.
Assuming Tuesday, January 4th is the first day that we can sign up for Destiny of Velious beta, and let’s say it takes 48 hours to start sending out invites, then January 6th is probably the first day most people will be logging into beta. January 6th to February 8th is 23 business days or around 1 month.
Keep in mind the WoW: Cataclysm expansion enjoyed a leisurely 5 1/2 months (June 30th -> December 7th) of invite-only beta testing and the last 2 of those weeks were open beta.
From Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson on the EQ2 Forums:
“Destiny of Velious” is almost ready for beta testing! We’re going into internal “Friends and Family” mode today and then we’ll start authorizing players for Closed Beta testing when we come back in 2011. So that’s great news. (TOFS, here I come!)Additionally, we’re doing two other cool things right before the end of the year.
1) From the 24th to the 27th of December, any Station Cash cards redeemed will be doubled in effect. This is our “Double Station Cash Stocking Stuffer” program if you see it mentioned elsewhere.
Don’t worry. They’ll fix the bugs for 1000 SC each.
And they think they can get flying mounts to not be buggy in less than a month XD?
Well, Glad to see nothing has changed since I’ve left.
Vortex, you left??? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
Btw, be sure to tell us that 100000 more times between now and the time you actually truly finally leave for good. Because for someone who “left”, you sure do show up a whole lot.
Got to say I’m sceptical here that they can get everything bug free in just one month, I’m guessing that the pressure to release the expansion on time (and hence earn extra money for SOE) is driving things.
I do have a feeling that SOE are cash strapped with such an awful release schedule, just one new game (freerealms) for a two year period and then Clonewars (no adverts seen), Planetside 2, and DCUO all to release within a year, maybe the Agency too.
Damn I wish I could have seen what EQ2 would have looked like without that failed project the agency sucking funds down for years.
Although to be fair they have produced far more then the larger WoW team has, and despite the 5.5 month beta for Catacylsm there were client crashes, quest bugs etc through the game at launch. Seeing that Cataclysm for max level characters is like Sentinels fate with twice the number of quests (but many of them take about 24 seconds to complete) but 2/3rds of the dungeons I think we get a better deal.
1 month for beta.
I was in the last 3 expansions betas where there were at least 2-3 months of beta testing.
RoK, good expansion, launched with some issues. TSO meh expansion, launched with some issues. Sentinals fate, launched with some major issues…
I suppose when you are free to play, you can get away with lackluster expansions and always update them later.
I wonder if flying mounts will be pushed to the live update 3 months post expansion, because of issues like New Halas was.
Beta lol. What can they do in a month time. Glad i’m done 😛