"The U.S. government's fiscal year begins on October 1 of the previous calendar year and ends on September 30 of the year with which it is numbered. Prior to 1976, the fiscal year began on July 1 and ended on June 30. The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 stipulated the change to allow Congress more time to arrive at a budget each year, and provided for what is known as the "transitional quarter" from July 1, 1976 to September 30, 1976. As stated above, the tax year for a business is governed by the fiscal year it chooses.
For example, the United States government fiscal year for 2010 ("FY10", sometimes written "FY09–10") is as follows:
1st Quarter: October 1, 2009 – December 31, 2009
2nd Quarter: January 1, 2010 – March 31, 2010
3rd Quarter: April 1, 2010 – June 30, 2010
4th Quarter: July 1, 2010 – September 30, 2010"

*cough* that's 10 months of beta at least. Unless I'm crazy.

Highly unlikely they are talking about fiscal year here. 99/100 when someone says 1QXX they mean Jan-Feb unless they are talking specifically about financial issues such as SEC fillings, etc.

Why should it be that surprising? STO uses the same engine as Champions Online. A LOT of the technical and infrastructure kinks have already been rolled out.

The beta for STO should be a far faster endeavor than Champions Online. The fundamental technology is proven and has already been tested by CO's 10-month beta test and launch.

For the record, STO has not been deployed to beta yet. it is still in F&F. Your doing a little gun jumping there.

I was under the impression that beta started already since Awen has been handing out beta keys already and they've had contests already to give out beta keys. If it hasn't started yet, that doesn't make things any better.

And as for their engine already being "proven", tell that to the CO players that have to put up with more bugs everytime a patch is released. STO is going to be doing things with the engine that CO hasn't tried yet.

CCon99,

The CO engine is stable, sorry to tell you. The vocal minority believes otherwise, though. other than the sound issues with XP Pro-64/Realtek I largely have to chalk up even the vocal minority to user error, being the tyrant I am.