Although the BETA has been released, and the access to the lobby sooner might make for the APPEARANCE of faster lobby-to-ingame action, but it really isnt. Even with the BUG fixes and the smoother performance (5v5 possible? yep!... if you can avoid the NAT nubs), there are two BIG reasons not to download the Beta:

1) Proxy servers are not fully initiated.  This is fine, most of us have had a greater success with NAT (85%-90% of the time, at least).  So NAT is still alive and kickin. This isn't so much of a big deal on its own, but coupled with the next point...

2) The main playerbase downloading this BETA (which has a prestige of fixing NAT issues) are the players WITH the NAT issues.  What this means is 95% of the games you join will be with others who are either too stupid to configure firewalls (and thus their NAT issues in the first place) or too arrogant to.  Expect player time-outs, NAT failure, and a LONG AS HELL lobby to game wait time.

Lies, you say? Well, think about the large portion of the community who DON'T come on these forums, and don't even know about the BETA patches!  They haven't had to come on here because their experience has not been hindered by NAT problems, so they have not had to seek help via forums.  Impulse doesn't have test patches defaulted in, so the "casuals" won't participate in this BETA if they haven't already had NAT issues.  To be cliche, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is on their minds.

Just wait until Monday when it is mandatory, and the larger non-NAT problem playerbase are required to move to the new patch, so the effects of those"Blackhole Players" (those with the NAT problems) are mitigated substantially.

Remember, this is merely a warning, information to keep you all aware.  Because i care. And i want Karma for my good deed