so anyone who had applied with clones that didn't win will be guaranteed this time ?
The second beta test has been postponed from February due to the issues discovered during the first beta test which resulted in all content updates getting delayed to March.
An NGS section on the forum, woo! Registration for the CBT ended on the first of March, so I hope those who had not signed up before managed to do so! Thread will be updated accordingly ASAP.
I've been in both tests for the beta and neither has had a region lock on it, I've been able to play from abroad with no issues. It does look like prioritized older accounts than newer ones, those in the first alpha test who had frequent logins over the last year got a "special invite" e-mail thanking for a decade of support (myself included). I haven't seen anyone who started playing in the last year in the tests yet.
Well I can for sure tell you of 4 german/austrians who had to use VPN, and at least 3 from the USA. While 2 people I know from JP did not need one.
Never got an error, just outside of JP it showed the servers as in maintenance.
Also, out of our ancient alpha Accounts none got picked, but completely new accounts got picked for the beta. (But that could be simply bad luck, just mentioning it because 7 alpha accounts didnt get picked but 7 new ones did so there is definately no alpha-account preference)
So I kinda had the completely opposite experience of yours. As did all the people I know that got in.
I've heard PS4-only players got into the beta as well. :')