Jens

I would definitely love to sink my teeth into this awesome flagship of Turn based Strategy goodness.... (now if only they made an expansion that allowed the Space Race to take it a step further....)

I know the hourly thing is kinda crappy sounding just thought I'd throw this piece of fine print on it out... Essentially if you buy the 20 hour packs the game time only goes down while you are in the Action Districts. In other words only in the regions you can drive around, shoot, do missions, or otherwise cause mayhem and destruction.
The Social District (where you can work on customization ala Forza style) is unlimited access for anyone who buys the game and if you only go into the Social District the 50 hours won't dissappear until you play for 50 hours in the action zones. They also announced that when you manufacture items and auction them you can do so for either RTW points or in-game cash, which in a loopy way, prevents "gold farming".
A lot of us Beta testers think that, at least for the one's that want to get their customization on heavy at the start, the 50 hours should last around a month. Considering that most games going for 60 bucks are getting rated for running less than 10 hours I'd think some people would consider this at least a must-try (especially if you are into PVP type games).

And Im thinking that the person who posted about the driving sucking the Beta Servers are out of Germany so anyone testing from the US would have lag (especially while driving)