Multiplayer is even more broken today - How about a beta server?

Simply put, why not push out patches like today's (which made connectivity worse for me, not better) onto a beta server. That way players can try out the new patch and if feedback is good, then it can be released to the main server. If it doesn't work, then people can go back to playing on the normal server. That way we can at least PLAY the game - which is all most of us want to do.

This is really a reiteration of what I said before - stop releasing broken code to the main game branch. There was insufficient testing before the initial release, and now there is insufficient testing before connectivity patches. I don't know what kind of test scenarios are being run over there, but nothing compares to a full-fledged public beta.

More importantly, this would allow us to continue to play on the old version while GPG/Stardock figures out what's wrong with their latest beta.

first game: half the players in the game were 0ms green, the other half 0ms red. Nobody can successfully get connected to everyone.

update: just tried playing another game, and it CRASHED during the load screen. Not a "fatal error and close" crash. A "lock up windows so you have to restart" crash. This has never happened to me before today's patch.

update2: next game, got stuck on the "Connecting to Lobby" black screen, with no button/option to exit the lobby and try to get another game. Had to Ctrl-Alt-Del and end task. This is also new, as of today's patch.