Well, the Beta Applications are now fully closed, and the first lot of testers have been finalised. So here I'll go, listing who they are:

▪A_Llama
▪BigBird
▪cLoWnInG-aRoUnD
▪FadeToBlack
▪Frosty
▪General Bison
▪M0RPhEuS
▪Moltar
▪Path_Finder
▪Priest
▪Psycho_byte
▪Radagast
▪Shooteh
▪Skilled Pro
▪St0rmer_66

Now, if your name is here, Congratulations, please check the forums. If it is not here, never fear, one of these bums above will most likely not respond within the week they have to respond so you might get their spot!

Just want to say thanks to everyone who applied! It was pretty hard because I had over 200 applications to go through and most were very good. Allthough, I did get a few interesting ones. Those will be seen in "ForK's beta tester picking saga". Look forward to that.

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No major developments of late but just summarising what's been going on. Firstly, the final result of the most active poll in quite some time (and a big thankyou to "Frosty the Aussie" for suggesting it). It was a close run from the beginning, noone holding a clear lead. Yet surely enough a pattern emerged and the clear winner was: Belgium! Closely following second (only by 7 votes!) was Russia, and finally the US of A (trailing by a further 8 votes.) I've also started this thread to gain more info from people who had voted "Other" on the poll. After it has been properly researched there should be a new section for the Belgiums appearing on the site. Also, I'd like to remind all that they will only be appearing in HL2, not HL.
Next up, we welcome Teckniel, a talented modeller/mesher to the team. Also, beta testing applications are officially closed. Fork is being pestered to sort through the astounding response we got from the HL community, about 200 in all. Thanks to the various news sites that spread the word for us. Finally, Chief has updated the forums to IPB v1.3.1 giving it a much needed overhaul and a bit of a tweaked look. Bye for now!