While Star Citizen is in alpha, I would argue that we are still even in stages before that. While the achievements of server meshing and Star Engine are impressive, the underlying game's framework is still very much a proof of concept and has not proven to us that it actually works. During the "4.0 preview" the game collapsed under load. It was not just one, or two, or several targeted systems. There were a large number of critical failure points from client to server queues, to authentication, to microservices. Just about everything broke in some sort of fundamental way. Whether it was hangers not opening, or global chat failing, or shards failing and players being locked in limbo... there was no single thing that you can't point at and go "yeah that was the core issue." It was pretty much everything. The game still cannot handle the player load and traffic. Nor can it offer the stability needed for basic play. Even with servers that have 500 players it feels no different than what we had with 100. There is still no content available that supports players interacting or congregating in large numbers, and whenever this was attempted in a meshed environment, the game fundamentally collapsed (like Xenothreat). It does concern me that this kind of load (the congregation of large amount of players into one space to support fleet battles) is still not proven to work at even a basic level. The game is already collapsing in itself without these same area congregation events. The only thing that we have that is remotely close to true player congregation load testing is when a new patch comes out and everyone floods to landing zones. And it is in these moments where the game experiences its most epic bugs and disasters. We are pretty far in the development cycle and the basic framework the game needs to operate is still not working. Beyond this there are other significant secondary issues like UI interaction, quality of life, content, the flight model, and the threat of large unfinished systems like engineering or maelstrom that threaten to cause instability and bugs on the level of 4.0 because they will change the way the entire game works. Then when you have the tertiary issues that need to be dealt with, like game balance and pve vs. pvp... I wished we were farther along. But we are so far away from an actual working product, even at a beta level or what would be considered ok for "early access" on steam. For now I sleep, there are other games to play, other things to divert attention to. The game is just not ready for basic play. See you all in a few years.