Neverwinter: When is open beta not open beta?

So Neverwinter is a free-to-play, free-to-download game. On April 30 open beta starts, but here’s the thing, it doesn’t seem much like a beta. You see, after April 25, the official open beta, start date for players who are founders -i.e. they ponied up some cash – there aren’t anymore play wipes. Yeps. I guess it qualifies as a beta if you need an invite to download and play, but that’s still not a given.

At the moment, April 30th is looking like the official launch date for Neverwinter. Maybe it’s one of those things where they’ll ease into an official release date. Don’t want to be too fast about these things. But really, if characters aren’t going to be wiped, isn’t that an actual release?