Congrats on the launch! I am confident that the game will continue to see improvement and refinement after release.

Yay!!!!!

Good job to all involved.  It has been fun (already).

Wow...cant believe its that soon...then again...maybe it feels short because we have been doing this for awhile now haha.  Congrats and I know this will be a hit!!

One thing to consider from Stardock's perspective, most of the Founder's and beta testers have been playing GC for years.

As long as they take care of the crashes and major bugs, the average new player is not going to be as sensitive as we are to balancing problems and little issues that piss us off.

I have not had a crash in 5.2 or 5.3, only the pirate anomaly hang-up that B6 is supposed to fix. I do have a quad gaming computer though, so I do wonder if it will be okay for dual core and/or a lot of lap tops. Those biggest maps may be a problem.

I have to say, I agree and hope they aren't being to optimistic with it being ready for prime time by then, lets hope Beta 6 is here soon and looking good, 3 weeks is not long.

Don't get me wrong the current build is fun, but it doesn't look three weeks from full release IMO, I do not want the game to flop because it's not quiet ready when they release. I know it will get plenty of love after launch and that's fine for us who have been with it since the alpha test. But people who are expecting a release quality game will not be so causal about it if it's not up to scratch. 

I agree with Econundrum1 on this, that I just consider release another upgraded Beta. We will get a 'day 1' patch quickly after and then there will be free content patches/fixes for free of course. I expect the first DLC's to be about 2 months after and a full expansion about 6 to 9 months after May.

I think there really need to be some guidelines on the game start menu about the sort of RAM requirements to get playable performance out of certain Galaxy sizes and number of players, just to manage people expectations.

I'd agree that to a new player GC3 is not the most approachable game, some good tutorials will fix that.

There are other bug bears I have like synthetics getting planetary events to do with food and organic diseases that makes no sense mechanically or flavor wise, and I don't think they have any intention of fixing that prior to release from what's been said.

Mostly though I think they need to look at balance, typos, graphical glitches, crashes, and UI issues.

ultimately I'm hopping I'm underestimating how much further along Beta 6 is from 5.3 in terms of these things, but while the currently published bug fix list looks promising the proof will be in how it plays.

The game is definitely fun, but I have yet to play a game without a crash to desktop.  I consider it a feature, since it is a forced stop that lets me get some sleep before I have to go to work the next day, but the crashes should be taken care of at least before the game is released.

OMG! Not 5 days before Witcher. What have you done to me!? 

I agree with you on this. Things like the text clipping needs to be fixed and the game must be playable enough that the new player blames himself more than the game if he doesn't understand.

Paul has insisted that there will be a tutorial and I haven't heard that mentioned lately. Even a mediocre tutorial is better than none for a game going for a broad market.

I think they've got this and I hope I am right I have seen worse games released and patched into respectability. Making History II was awful at release but was patched up to respectability.However, it is not really an example of a mass market game. Sid Meiers Beyond Earth was nicely polished at release but crashed horribly for nearly everyone.

You could write a book about what I don't know about the business of PC gaming, so anything I say is mostly blather.

I can't help but feel that you guys are releasing it too soon. I mean yes I am very excited, but I just think another month of Beta is needed to work out all the bugs and exploits.

The release of a game might be based on a economical decision, ie. upfront-money is more worth than late-money (even if the late one is more altogether). That's why there is stuff like Founders, Name-a-star, buy Beta release (I remember times where you were invited to play Beta for free, because actually you are doing their jobs; "hi" Blizzard).

Nevertheless, it worked well with GC2, and if you look at the history of that development you'll see it stopped at the final release of Twilight around a decade after the premier release. DreadLords also was changed multiple times, the 1.53 is different in quite some areas than the initial release. But even in Twilight 2.042 you could still find bugs that were there in the vanilla DL game. Don't get your hopes to high and be realistic - some stuff will never get fixed (even if it is promised, well you don't expect someone will talk their own game down, esp. if it's commercial). Some bugs even become a feature (like the MCC in DarkAvatar) or new updates or bugfixes will introduce new additional bugs (that might be gamebreaking and will never get fixed [eg. Influence Point trading])

Stardock will go on and develop, keep updating, and if things come alike like in GC2, then the most interesting stuff will be released via further addons.

Actually I'm not so concerned on the feature complete front more on the serious bugs and issues front.