What the Devs have been Up to

[ScP]

Hi fellas,

We would like to take the opportunity to point out a few important details regarding TeamSpeak 3:

• There are no plans to make any radical changes to the way TeamSpeak is licensed and used.
• Non-commercial end users (i.e. - most gaming clans/guilds) and Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) will still be allowed to host servers for free, and of course run clients for free.
• All commercial entities will still have to pay licensing fees based on slot count. There currently aren't any plans to change our pricing for commercial hosters either.

The most popular topic, the release date, is still somewhat unknown. Our current, best guess estimate (or hope ) is to reach feature set completeness by Q4 of 2006. Please understand we will not move into an open testing situation (i.e. - Open BETA) until we are confident that our product is 100% ready for the public. In essence, and in an effort to provide you with the highest degree of quality in TeamSpeak 3, we will continue to state that TeamSpeak 3 is "done when it's done". However, we will also continue to make our very best efforts to bring you with additional updates and ETAs regarding our development progress, test phases, and release dates.

In terms of testing here is the deal:

• We are currently in the ALPHA phase, which will last until our new TeamSpeak 3 feature set is complete.
• Once we are feature complete, there will (hopefully) be a short, Closed BETA with more participants.
• After the Closed BETA is finished we will move into Open BETA stress testing.
• When we are 100% satisfied with the quality of TeamSpeak 3, we will release a final version... and we will host a "TeamSpeak 3 Release Party" - details to be determined at a future date.

On development aspects (which are always difficult to discuss, since we don't want to spoil the surprise by openly telling you all the goodies we have in store) we are currently working on implementing the permissions system within TeamSpeak 3. It will be similar to what is present in TeamSpeak 2, but will contain far greater flexibility - for example, by allowing admins to create "custom user groups". Sorry, but we just can't tell you any more at this time, everything else is classified (for now)! :P

Stay tuned!

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