At least as I understand the terms. I.e. Alpha testing is done mostly in house by members of the development team and possibly a few carefully chosen others. Beta testing is done by a fairly large and usually somewhat random group most of whom are not on the development team.
My understanding/opinion is that with a piece of software like this one really can't avoid beta testing. From some of the comments made early on I expected this to be during EE (and was OK with that). Arguably since Alpha invites became widely available and certainly since the stress test invites went out I think Pathfinder Online now qualifies as being in Beta testing and EE may either be an extension of that or as was suggested a post Beta rapid evolution phase.
When thought of in these terms I'm actually even more positive about where it is than I was before. I'm willing to hear arguments both ways though.
