so the game is currently about to enter "beta" except i know it is already out in russia. so to me that means the "beta" is mostly about content translation to english. am i mistaken?

so i guess my question is, what state of flux are the abilities and balance consideration currently in? do they consider the game to be mostly in a working state needing only translation? or are they rushing to finish the translation long before they consider the game to be finished?

how often are there updates that affect game balance and drastically change the gameplay of the beta?

Considering that even some essential features (like raid interface for example) don't work yet, I'd rather call it alpha than beta. But developers promised to fix some of the most annoying bugs and release a large content patch soon.

i suppose there is less pressure to apply polish before going from beta to release when your game is free to download and play. retail and subscription games look really bad if they charge you money for a broken product, but a FTP game that doesn't work yet is still something for nothing. i guess nobody expects the item shop to rake in the cash until more of the features are working, but why not let people play as soon as possible. they have nothing to lose i guess.