The point of an alpha isn't to get the community to all just be able to play early.
The point of an alpha is to have a relatively small number of players essentially chip in to offer balance insights without releasing the game for general distribution.
Letting everyone is in just early access, not an alpha build. We know what they're testing, just not the specific details. Which is pretty much common practice for any game dev company ever. I don't know why Relic gets so much flack for it.
The new faction is not coming out on May the 5th. But some people are getting to help contribute to balance and bug testing because Relic lacks the manpower and breadth of employees to do their own testing on the level needed for this kind of product.
The problem is the community isn't as big most other major games that do alphas/betas. The issue is that the active community is small enough that a decent portion of it gets in and a decent portion doesn't. The polls show it, people that get in see no problem with it and vote no and those who didn't make it vote yes.
There should be some sort of wave system, everyone on these forums and CoH.com deserve the chance to test this before the general public. Why? Because this community is the one through bad and good stuck with it, its not much to ask for Relic to toss a bone to its loyal community, probably one of the most loyal communities I have seen during my gaming experience.
They knew this would split us and create drama, the whole active community should have had the priority status. For those that got in, they see no problem with this and defend it, the rest that didn't don't like being left out in the dark when new content is being tested and not even knowing what it is.
Bloodnok was right, this whole ordeal split the community down the middle, its sad to see people fighting over this but the people who didn't get in have a legitimate gripe, especially when those who have never play got in and so many that actively play didn't.