As posted on the official forum by Cindy Bowens, Sigil will send today invitations to ALL the board members to apply for the beta 1 of Vanguard:

Sigil Games Online has entered Phase 1 of our Beta Program! And, as promised, our Community Members will have the first opportunity to apply for it!

We will begin sending out emails today to everyone that has registered on our forum through today with an invitation to apply for Beta 1. Follow the instructions in the email and you are on your way!

Once you have submitted your application, your name will be added to our list of potential Beta participants. Qualified applicants will be selected for the program and added gradually, as we need more and more players throughout the course of Beta.

Please remember that this is an invitation to apply for Beta. If you qualify and are selected at any stage, you will be notified.

So check your email and submit your application! I am sure I will see many of you in Beta soon! We have been looking forward to this for a long time! :)

The last application I sent was for WoW and I was able to enter in March (someone may remember this, no other title revealed to be more appropriate, heh…). Before that one I only cared for “Wish” (I still have pages of posts saved, probably the beta test I cared the most about and that went right into the toilet). I’m definitely not one of those submitting applications for every beta they see. They aren’t worth my time.

After all I wrote for WoW I told myself I’d never join again another beta where to waste my time (because I really try to do my best and spend tons of time analyzing, discussing, suggesting. And I don’t like when I clearly see that what I do is simply useless). In this case I’d gladly do an exception if it happens and even if I know that all I’ll do will be, once again, useless. These games enter beta tests, the most important phase, when they are already running out of time. When there isn’t anymore time for serious discussions, attention to the detail, polish and all the rest. They are just rushing out and beside huge exploits, major instabilities and complete fuckups, nothing really matters. I will probably hate Vanguard but I respect Brad and he demonstrated me that he is able to hold a discussion. I added a category on this site for the game long ago and despite you only find superficial critics on it (but I could only comment what I got, which was vapor, in fact) the reason why it was added it’s because I’d have high expectations about it and because on the horizon there simply isn’t another equally interesting game for this genre. Whether it will reveal as a colossal disaster or a success.

This is another of those games and companies with a great potential, and I hate when I see a potential wasted. This is why I had and still have so many doubts about it. I’m terribly sceptical about it and I hate when I feel deluded about something I cared about and maybe spent so many hours in beta. Still, I have to see beta tests that actually matter. Those I joined just made me feel just another connection to stress test the servers and nothing else. Like with the “community” in general, a beta test is a huge and precious resource and I’ve never seen it used properly.

If anything I could help them taking screenshots that do not suck.