From my initial seeings (yes I'm am also new...and looking more and more into this AWESOMLY GOOD LOOKING GAME)

your question 2 and 4) Ie. tournament system as well as gathering lobbies and all are ALREADY IN!

As a matter a fact..there is already an on-going tournament between the forces of dark and of light!! First team to get 1.000.000 favor points! It's on pantheon page if memory serves me right!

Well on this site and is updated all the time! Check it out +_+

A piece of advice:

When asking about the game, don't mention DotA.  Generally speaking, you'll get more productive answers that way.

In response to your other questions:

1) There will most likely be more Demigods (not heroes) coming in later additions to the game, whether free content patches or expansions (probably in both).

2) There will be a built in tournament system.

3) As for lag, I'd say it probably will be better.  Connectivity and lag have gotten much better over the course of Beta, though they still aren't perfect.  Probably will be pretty solid by release, though.

4) Most likely there will be channels / lobbies to chat in outside of games, though we haven't been shown anything like that yet in Beta.

4) Most likely there will be channels / lobbies to chat in outside of games, though we haven't been shown anything like that yet in Beta.

Yes we did, shift+tab brings up an ingame IRC windows where you join the #Demigod channel to ask for a game, pretty much as an ALT+Tab if you play Garena.

Hello guys,

I have a few questions as well but see no reason in starting a new topic, so:

5) How large is the playerbase? To start from the beginning, I've heard of this game on the Battleforge forum, a single topic mentioned it briefly. Haven't seen it advertised before so I had no idea what the game is all about. But it was the same with Battleforge, there were only a few hundred of us (at most) in the closed beta and all of us were worried because of the small community and it became a factor in not buying the game. Then they opened up the beta and people just came pouring in, now the forums are on fire and the playerbase became so huge it's safe to buy the game and we don't have to worry about that part anymore.

OK, enough of BF. I'm really interested in Demigod but there is no way to play the game at the moment (tried to ask someone for his beta pass for a week or so in exchange for some £ but I was told that it's tied to an account? I can't expect anyone to trust me in sharing his so I left it). As I was saying, I'm worried about the small playerbase. Are there thousands of people playing, is it easy to find a game with the help of matchmaking etc.? I know that there will be a demo but it's kind of hard to raise people's interest in a game and make the community grow after release (plus it's cheaper to pre-order games than to buy them afterwards etc.)

6) I've read a lot about connection issues and that it's getting better but it's still there. Nowadays I'm not really buying this "it's only a beta" reasoning so can someone tell me more about it? Is it lag you're dealing with or disconnections, does it happen in 2v2, 4v4 as well? Or only on larger maps? Or maybe when there is too much going on on the map? Is it serverside lag? Because if it is, once the game goes live, more people will play the game and that would make it much worse.

7) This has been asked before but I still couldn't find the definite answer for a release date. Don't kill me please. Gamespot says it's this Friday, a shop is telling me it's the 17th of April, PLAY is showing 24th of April and according to GAME it's still TBD. The official DG site has no info, Stardock has no info.

Thanks, everyone!

5) How large is the playerbase?

The Stats page here: http://pantheon.demigodthegame.com/rankings/overall/page/65/ shows 1,200 have played the game since they started tracking a month or two ago.  The overall Beta probably has more like 1,500, but I've rarely had trouble finding games.  The release will include a friendslist, ingame IRC, and clan support.  I'm betting the first two weeks of release will have a massive multiplayer influx - like 1k players online at any given time.  

6) I've read a lot about connection issues and that it's getting better but it's still there.

Demigod is a peer-to-peer game.  There is no server.  You don't have to forward your ports or do anything to your router because Impulse tunnels through your NAT.  It's pretty cool.  The problem is that if you are in a game with one player who has something wrong with their setup, low connection, slow PC, rabid firewall, etc. then it will slow or stop the connection process completely.  So they've been trying to fix that, but it's slow going.  Generally right now you can connect to a random game 80-90% of the time.  If you want to play against specific people, however, your chances go down to about 50%.  This should bump up a bunch by release.  (If it doesn't then all the kiddies will go back to xbox)  

7) April 14?

Thank you! I'm quite pleased with the answers and all the info you gave me. Don't have to worry about the playerbase then. 14th of April is 3 weeks away though. I don't see the point of this elite closed beta but whatever.

Is voice chat included? DG being a highly competitive game, I suppose the answer is yes, though you haven't mentioned it   

About multiplayer. You told me that there are no servers. Is it similar to Xbox Live where you can either connect to a completely random host or to a friend's game? Is there there a list of currently running games? Can you use matchmaking or do you have to battle against hardcore players all the time if you're unlucky? When you host a game, random people may connect to it from all over the world no matter what their ping is?

Oh, and lastly, if people can (have to) host individually, is there an option for players to drop in and out of a match? So if there are 12 players and one of them leaves due to lag or sth., can another person take his place or you'll end up with 5v6 for the rest of the match?

Not sure i like the AI for leavers. Guess ill have to play before i judge the AI though. And by clicking on the map, I meant i like to move my character on mini map while looking and something else on main screen. But seems cool. I'll buy it and give it a shot.

1.  "Elite Closed Beta" - it was open to anyone who preordered the game before a couple of weeks ago.  This means that the devs had access to a group of players who were interested in the game and invested in making it good (because they already paid for it).  Instead of having to sort through thousands of random posts, they get a tightly controlled, generally mature and enthusiasticly helpful community.

2.  The post-release Demo is an Stardock standard.  They are working on base gameplay right up until release, so diverting resources to putting together a demo will make the actual game shoddier.  Better, in this view, to make the game, then release the demo.

I don't want to start and argument because that wouldn't change anything so I'll just tell you what I think about these two things:

1) Yes, you right. People who bought the game will pour more time in playing it (and maybe providing feedback in the process) as they want to get the most out of their money and make the game better they already paid for. Or stop playing because the game doesn't deliver what they were expecting. This is usual and happens all the time.

If you open up your game to a larger amount of people you get more of everything. More players who leave the game, more people who play for fun and don't search for bugs and more individuals who provide valuable feedback. Though everyone gives you feedback, even if they play for fun or plan to leave the game so in the end, you're better off having a larger player base. Also, more people spot more problems, are able to test more things and can tell their friends about the game.

2) Generally, if a demo comes out after the game's release date then that's because the developers don't believe in their product's success or they had to rush it and didn't have time to prepare a demo version for their game. Which leaves the end-product flawed either way. It's for their own protection, even if most people realize that the game didn't live up to the hype (if there was any) or is not polished, it's too late. They already pre-ordered or bought it without trying it first and that's a lot of money for the publisher. This isn't true for every game of course but usually is for online titles as these are easiest to make demos from. You only need to block certain features for the accounts, there is no need to touch or cut the actual game in any way.

So these were my thoughts. I will keep my eye on the game and try to decide what to do because it has a very promising concept

Actually this is incorrect. Generally speaking, beta testing goes on all the way until the product is pretty much out the door.  When you make a demo, you want it built off the same code branch as whatever's getting shipped or newer.  This ensures that the demo doesn't have any showstopping bugs that were fixed near the end of the dev cycle. 

Making a demo is actually a task unto itself.  You need to figure out what features to strip/lock from the main game and ship the minimized one.  You also need to consider possible knock-ons of turning things off like UI glitches.  A demo needs it's own QA pass.  It's not as trivial as you might think.

For console games, they need to go through a whole whack of verification steps.  For example, with Sony, you need to get your build approved.  Generally speaking, there's several parties you submit the game to to finally finish the process.  During that time, the devs have nothing to do.  In my experience, it's during this time that the demo is worked on with the assumption that the submitted build will be approved.

When the game finally gets approved, the demo is put on the digital distribution channels immediately while the actual game gets prepared for printing.

There were around 6,000 people in the beta if you look at the pantheon stats page.  Demigod seems more popular than Battleforge.  Lets use IGN's gamestat page, although I'm not sure how accurate it is. 

Battleforge release this week is rank #153.  BF should be in top 10 like all other games during it's release week.  Maybe BF isn't as popular or gamestats is just broken.

http://www.gamestats.com/objects/142/14235191/

Demigod is rank #4

http://www.gamestats.com/objects/903/903770/

O man I hear that...Every game I play I'm like "I have 4 minutes so hurry up and toggle ready!"

Anyway, check it out when you get some time, the team game has really become deep, imo.

I thought you returned the game and got some parts of your refund.  You still have beta access?