Greetings Gangstas!
The streets have been eerily quiet for a couple of months now, between my day job being super busy (yeahhhh school holidays) and the size of the incoming update for alpha 1.0 early access I feel like I may have bitten off a little more than a lone dev can chew.
The original October 10th release had to be bumped back until the 24th and even then I feel like I'm running the schedule down to the wire but I think we'll make it as long as nothing breaks down too badly!
Anyways, the main purpose of this pre-release is to test both the SQL data system the new steam lobby system. The previous lobby system was always at least half broken, you either had dedicated servers or home hosted servers working but it was never possible to have both. That meant the "host game" button wasn't working and basically just dropped you into single player. This new system should work for both cases.
As for the SQL stuff you will notice that all players now have a level and can gain XP by killing other players and destroying other factions structures.
This level isn't directly tied to progression and doesn't do anything other than give a general indicator of how likely you are to cop a beating if you pick a fight with a given person.
I won't say too much yet but the actual progression system should be rolling out in the final alpha 1.0 release!