what was likely the biggest letdown to me was the NDA. it was a week long press event, but nobody could talk about anything til the entire event was over, and then all media parties released all info in one big dump (cause if they didnt, the others would have)

this completely ruined all the discussion about said info that I hold dear.

Nightly NDA lifting so everyone could publish that days info at the same time would have been far more stimulating to the interested parties, or even no NDA at all would have been fine too.

The way it was handled.. just plain sucked.

I disagree. Maybe it's some people's cup-of-tea, but I think releasing info in a clear manner that includes their gameplay intent is way better than drawing the wrong conclusions from data mining lines of code.

I agree.

After the NDA was lifted I thought "Golly, this is all the stuff the told us before. That doesn't bode well." But now that beta stuff is leaking I'm dancing around like a kid at Christmas.

I'm pretty sure (based on the timing) that the beta was supposed to launch with the press event. That was going to be the Jobsian "one more thing" moment of the press event.

But I think that there ended up being some last minute serious bugs that prevented a perfectly timed beta launch.