I get a feeling Alphas are more about polishing bugs and appearance out. Balance is more of a fine adjustment thing that takes time and is probably easier when the game is being played in the public domain.
Not really, we had some drastic changes in the previous alpha. What you say makes sense, but that's not the case here. It was like 5-6 days prior to release and they changed the whole mechanics of OKW. Not that it was a mistake, but come on, changes like that at the final moments?