How long will the beta be?

[feuerdog]

I would think that SOE would want to get the game ready for the holiday season, but that may be too soon.

The core mechanics will be fairly stablized from the tech test I'd hope, but there are still tons of things to test and balance.

There will still be core mechanics issues that will pop-up.
There will be alot more testing and polishing on the server side as the numbers of players saturate the beta.
There will be plenty of technical issues as people with older, newer, and different PC configurations enter the beta.
The sheer number of beta players involved in the next few days will highlight a bunch of issues that have not been present yet, or somehow overlooked.
They want 3 continents worth of content ready for release and I don't think anyone seen any real testing on the other continents.
After all that is sorted, there will still be issues related to basic game balance to adjust. Weapons, vehicles, certs, controls, interfaces, resources, timers, speeds, etc, etc.

My guess,....we are looking at a 1st quarter 2013 release at the earliest.

BUT, it all depends on how well the beta testing progresses. I'm pretty sure there is some wiggle room involved with projected release dates and the finalization processes.