I have been slowly thinking this myself. With each release, the forums just get worse and worse. At least if the game went into official beta, maybe some of the critism would die down.

There are some people that they will never please, and they manage to be loud enough to make the rest of us miserable. They should have more than enough feedback by now to make all the fundamental changes they need, so there's no point in dragging SE's name through the mud any further than was necessary.

I don't know if it's the right thing to do or not, but if 1.18 fails to impress, I really think they should consider it.