one thing they are not doing is rushing, i agree with the OP, every Beta i have ever played has been the full game, and it is released to look at the impact of the game on different pc specs as well as to sort out balance and bugs. 

Saying its a beta but not letting you play a fully feature complete game, albeit with lots of bugs and other issues (which is the whole point of a beta to sort these out), is misleading as it less of a beta and more of a demo.

I think, if something is unfinished and incomplete, rather than bugged, its more alpha than beta. I am not game-dev, though, so maybe i am wrong.

While I appreciate the eagerness people have for playing the other races, as was mentioned by others, we need focused testing to get good data. 

That said, don't be surprised if an update shows up late next week with two more factions... 

Right that's it, I'm getting rid of this dot in my name, I'm positive it's causing all these attempts at quoting me to fail*.

And I agree, which is why I brought up a final beta, but if that post up there by Yarlen is to be believed, then perhaps I was wrong about them disabling TEC

*Edit - Or not, apparently we can no longer have spaces in our name, and MrHaze is taken, how troublesome.

Huzzah! Now I can look forward to bashing the TEC and Vasari at the same time as Advent!

Wait... What was I thinking? I think that he means that both of the Advent factions are going to be released. The Vasari still have a lot of work ahead of them.

"generally begins when the software is feature complete"

"a feature freeze on the product"

 meaning that if 2 of the faction are not complete the game is in alpha, 

the term "perpetual Beta" cannot really be applied to Sins Rebellion as it is available for "pre order", if it was a "perpetual beta" product then there would be no need to a) describe it as a pre order and it would be publicly avail from the preferred distribution method i.e Steam.

As for the staggering of the factions, it makes no sense however you look at it, balancing a faction based on how well human player perform vs the AI will result in the TEC being unbalanced due to how superior the human is compared to the AI. Even if they release all the factions together to make make playable the full roster of teams the TEC will need rebalancing to compensate for the differences in the Advent and Vasari being played by humans and not the AI. 

If they release another faction as the single playable faction in the next release then, as Timmaigh pointed out it will break all balance done to the TEC in the first release when changes are made to the TEC.

The only way to properly balance a game, especially an RTS game, is to make all balance changes on a player vs player basis using all teams not one or two. 

Also there may be other complications when humans controlling the advent or vasari are introduced. 

So this leads to two possible outcomes

A) the game is no where near finished and this is all they got to release

staying on the current balancing strategy the game will be woefully unbalanced upon final release 

All this is doing is artificially lengthening the time until final release. Basically Rebellion is to Sins what Forged Alliance was to Sup Com, but that came out 8 months after Sup Com not 4 years and counting. 

Not that im not looking forward to it and ill still buy it, Sins is a great game and me and my friends have had some good games over lan at various peoples houses, but i fear Rebellion has the smell of Duke Nukem Forever about it in that it will never be as good as its development time leads us to believe. But we can still hope. 

LOL, i made the same mistake. Automatically assumed those factions are going to Advent and Vasari, when most likely Yarlen meant Advent subfactions (though maybe we are in for surprise and it will be one Advent and one Vasari faction, most likely the Rebel one - although i doubt it).

BTW when i saw those Advent "centered" screens on RTS-guru yesterday + thought about the recent update related to Advent Mines, i had the feeling, the Advent are going to be unlocked soon.

I hope there will be some nice dev commentary, faction - introducing video again, if not new cool teaser. 

I think you seem to forget where you are.  This is the forum for Rebellion.  Rebellion is currently in BETA.  This "IS" where the bugs get reported.  They dev's are under no obligation to open the full game up to you just because you want to play the full game.  I will repeat it.  This is a beta.  The purpose of a beta is to test various elements of a game under varied circumstances to locate, replicate, determine the cause and fix bugs in preparation for release of a finalized product.  The dev's have the right idea for their testing methodology.  First you test the one faction exhaustively and methodically.  Then follow the same methodology for the other subsequent factions on their own.  This method allows them to focus in a particular area allowing them to find more bugs faster and more accurately for each faction.  Once done with each faction, you then unlock them all for full game testing.  Then you find and squash any remaining and new bugs.  Once confident that all bugs within your control and/or awareness have been squashed.  Start game balance testing and tweaking.  Don't tell dev's that in order to solve your impatience problem they should create another section just for the real beta testers.  The game hasn't even been released yet.  This is the beta section.  You're in it, now.  This isn't some right you're exercising right now.  It's a privilege.  How many games have you pre-ordered lately that have given you early access to the game before release?  The people here who are properly beta testing this game are taking this seriously because we want this game to be as good as it can be before release.  As do the dev's which is why they are giving us this opportunity in the first place.  Rather than waiting for it to come out and hoping everything will be fixed later.  Which is more than we can say about most game developers.  You should feel lucky to be getting the opportunity.  You should feel lucky that you at the very least haven't been asked to agree to a non-disclosure agreement, which is common industry practice.

I'm all well and fine if you're just wanting to see the other factions and having a discussion about it.  It's a completely different thing when you start telling the dev's what to do with this forum.  Because that's when you've started to completely miss what the whole purpose of this forum is for.  Don't tell them to make another section just for the beta testing.  They've got bigger fish to fry like DEBUGGING THE GAME.  Welcome to the Beta section.  I hope you enjoyed your stay.  Oh and one more thing.  Before you decide to make yet another request of the dev's (you're at 2 now.. If you don't remember I'll enlighten you... 1. Open all factions for play ... And 2. Make section for beta testing... not the way you worded it, but it is what you essentially just asked for.) maybe you should consider contributing to the beta test by actually testing and reporting the bugs you've found with detailed descriptions.  Maybe then you will get a little more respect.

Calm down mate, it's only a suggestion. I'm not telling anyone what to do.

In my opinion, having a list of the known bug and being able to test/play the game with both 3 factions (no matter whether they're completely done or not) would be beneficial. I might be wrong, but then again, I don't think so, hence the SUGGESTION. I'm not threatening/forcing my will on anyone here. (Like you seem to be doing with your "enlightening" opinions").

Besides, I did PAY for the game. Having access to the beta is NOT a privilege (as you suggest), as it was very well mentioned when I bought the game. It's the very idea of a transaction: one side gives something against something else, usually money.

Now, I don't care for your respect nor do I care for your so-called "enlightening" recommendations.

I quite simply made a suggestion, leave it or take it, but please, don't go on bragging on how I should act in these forums unless you're a moderator or an admin.

P.S: I haven't stumbled on any bugs yet, apart from one which is already here in theses forums.

i take back all i said, even the AI can only be TEC rebel or loyal. What a waste of time. im all up for involving the player base in testing and what not but this is a joke. This isnt a Beta its 1/3 of an unfinished game.

Check-list 

balance - cant be done in this kind of half finished game

stability - ran fine on my pc

bugs - none i encounter in 3 games

performance - fine, no lag or excessive resource usage on my PC

Now move on and finish the other 2/3 of the game and stop stalling for time.

Or you could stop being so incredibly self centred and realise that people have been reporting issues and bugs since beta began, plenty of which were TEC exclusive and have been fixed internally.