Actually not the same people at all. To set the record straight, coh2.org handpicked experts from the original game to provide private feedback for COH2 before it was launched, over a year ago. That same group (with some additions along the way) continued to give feedback throughout the initial patches and during SNF S5. That same group became so frustrated when Elite Troops and Soviet Windustry Pay 2 Win commanders were dumped into the game (the problematic commander DLC business model was one of our core complaints from the very start) that the relationship between that group and Relic degraded entirely. Relic then abandoned that group, and selected entirely different people to test the Alpha for WFA.
I probably shouldn't bother recounting all this, but I don't like to see wrong information spread about on this point.
I'm glad you've shed more lite onto this.
That still leaves the question of how SI and ET in their first incarnation made it live(ET got pretty balanced, SI got butchered directly and indirectly by price changes).
I don't want to do any witch hunt here and there definitely are communication issues somewhere which lead to patches that are so obviously imbalanced that it makes one wonder WHO and how drunk he was when he accepted them.
It is good that you correct me(or anyone) if you know more on the issue.
I'm tired of NDA over NDA on NDA about NDA and all this secrecy on relics part.
I love their games, but I hate that there is absolutely no transparency on anything and whatever is delivered is delivered in form of bucket of ice cold water on the head.
I hope the new group see the imbalances and can beat relic into fixing them when they see it during closed tests, but seeing flowers like march deployment make me double question everything relic related and even my love for the game can not change it.