A status update was posted on the forums last night, here's a snippet.
> The beta development milestone was met early in December. Since then we've had a fully functional and stable beta build up on remote servers, which is being patched regularly. At the moment we're using part of this system to show the game to prospective partners, distributors, publishers, technology providers, etc. Our motivation here is to provide the best quality assurance, distribution, and service for the game and its players, so we consider this to be a very important phase for Darkfall.
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> We've already planned for self-publishing, but we need to know who's willing and able to do it better. We can’t announce a clear ETA on the first phase of the public testing yet, but we'll keep you posted on developments.
Check the source for the full post.