(My opinion only)
With the number and severity of the remaining and introduced bugs present on Testlive, this will be a disaster to the casual game player.
As we know, those who frequent the boards make up a rather small portion of your userbase. Blindsiding those players will have very undesirable effects, alienating quite a few of them.
The increased population of Testlive was due to the invigoration of the feeling that we could have an effect on gameplay and reduce potential bugs and went quite well when introduced. Then, however, the team addressed the problems and released one, if not more, Testlive updates that addressed the most serious.
The process has changed. A Testlive release now seems to be garnering feedback to work on patches while technically meeting the live release targeted date. I contend the team is not meeting the date by releasing a substandard product.
I seriously doubt the team is proud of this release and are not making the decision to release as-is.
I retain my faith in the team. My perspective of management decisions is now wavering.
Regards
jim