Thunderforge

Is there some reason you can't have a live service model with a "beta" label? I mean, open source games like The Battle for Wesnoth add new campaigns and gameplay elements with each release, and Age of Empires II does the same, including new multiplayer modes in some cases.

I think that my original point got a bit lost with these discussions. Is the takeaway that improved multiplayer, and in particular 1v1 matchmaking, is a prerequisite for dropping the "Alpha" label that have discouraged myself and others from trying out 0 A.D. in the past?

I came across 0 A.D. several years ago and, as an Age of Empires fan, figured it would be neat to try. I saw that it was an "Alpha" though and so I didn't download it, figuring it would be buggy and incomplete. I decided that I would wait until it was at least a Beta version when I tried it. A few years later I came back to it, only to discover it was still Alpha. I was confused about there being so much progress though. I decided to download it and it looked playable. There were still rough edges, but about what I would expect for a Beta version. I talked to another person who said they too had heard about the game, but never tried it because they too were "waiting for the game to not be buggy". When I asked when they would know that would be, they said "1.0, or at least a beta". So the "Alpha" label scared me off from trying 0 A.D. for years and scared off another person I know from trying it at all. Now that there have been Alphas for all 26 letters of the English alphabet, maybe it's time to start releasing Betas? That would prevent new users like me from thinking that the game is still a buggy mess not ready for prime time.