I hated XI Beta.... nothing worked the way I wanted it to work. So... No I do not want it to resemble the XI experience. XIV-1 Beta was boring because the world was really bare and not much to do so all I did was fish. It was better than XI but testing is testing. It is not the same as playing. I remember writing pages of complaints about stuff that didn't work and fiddling around trying to get stuff to work. If you love software debugging you will love Alpha,,,, otherwise just keep centered and concentrate on the questions SE asks. The devs have been complaining that open testing is frustrating to them because people don't do their tasks.

Boy it is good to hear that the "five-days of testing without a hitch" went well. That means they solved many of the lag problems. And it is correct that servers only lagged when there were more that 800 people in one area. This density does not limit the number of people that can sign on at one time. Yoshida said they will bring in everyone that applied.

You can verify that you are on the list by trying to sign up a second time. It tells you that you have already applied.

The 800 in one area lag is interesting in comparison to other games like Elder Scrolls Online that reports lags when 100 people are in one area. So SE is doing extremely well in dealing with the multiplayer lag problem.

The following information is for those who missed it:
Bayohne of the Community Team quoted: Q27: When can overseas players join the Alpha Test?
A: We’ve just conclude phase one of testing.

First off, we’ve managed to eliminate all the critical issues that surfaced due to heavy server stress, which is caused by an increase in players. So, right now, we’re safely running the game with around 800 people in a single zone.

This number applies not only to players, but enemies too. Here we have around 700, with 400 battles taking place simultaneously. That’s what we’re having our testers do right now. It’s come to light that the server becomes laggy when we go past the 800-player mark.

We’ve managed to identify the top 20 causes for this, and will be working to address the issues next week, along with all the bugs our alpha testers have submitted. We’ll temporarily stop alpha testing next week. The test has been taking place on two worlds already, and we’ll pick things up the week after for around five days. If everything looks okay, we’ll move to the global phase the week after that. We’ll probably be keeping the servers open 24 hours for our overseas players and for the aging test, and hope to have everyone participate from 11/26. We’re planning to give out a lot of accounts.
NOTE: This problem has been taken care of.
[1:41:58] Q: Can we have an updated roadmap and schedule for the start of the Beta Test to the release of ARR?
A: Honestly speaking, according to the roadmap that we released December 2011, we are currently two months and two weeks behind schedule. We’ve been working frantically to develop this game for a long time, and have just barely managed to stay on track until recently. However, when I was finally able to test the alpha version myself two and a half months ago, I realized that there were a ton of aspects I wanted to change. This goes for the UI, the display around the characters, and also the graphics. Version 1.0 started out like this as well, and I felt that we couldn’t release it in that state.

I felt that if we can’t make something that I can at least enjoy as a gamer, it’s...I mean, even if it’s just alpha stress testing, if we don’t provide that level of quality to our customers, then it’s no good. I made that clear to the team. And so we’ve refined the alpha version to this point and will approach the beta with the same attitude.

Of course, now that 1.0 has ended, we want to deliver ARR to the players quickly. However, we have seen some world class MMOs released in this past year, or year and a half, such as Rift, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2, and so forth. The staff and I have spent sleepless nights looking into these titles, and we feel that, this time, we want to be able to compete with these world-class games--and we don’t want to lose. For now, we ask that you give us more time to make adjustments, and we hope to release a new roadmap around the end of November or beginning of December. As for the beta test, we’re hoping to start beta phase one at the end of January or the beginning of February. We’ve already begun work, so we ask for your patience in the meantime.

In return, to ensure that many people can take part in the alpha test, as soon as we have entered the aging test, we’ll do our best to keep the servers open 24 hours so that everyone can experience it, so please give us a little more time. We want this to be a great game. That’s all I have to say about our progress up until now.
Note: Don't expect Beta to start until Feb 1, 2013.