This is my favorite forum on the Citadel.

Someone gave me an invite a while back and I didn't finish the sign-up process, mainly because it looked like I'd be required to sign up for and use some forum and give feedback on the preview stuff and I was concerned about how well everything worked. So did I read that correctly or is feedback just very encouraged? How stable is the preview dashboard and other software?

Fairly stable, from what I can tell. I don't think I've seen much of anything happen with this version that didn't happen before, at least in terms of network performance and overrall stability.

(I co-host a custom game night every week and a lot of the time I'm party lead, and I don't want it crashing and messing up other people's experience.) I might actually be fully in the program now, I'm not sure, I never agreed to the final thing but I seem to have the option to use the preview dashboard. If and when I get fully into the program I'll be sure to invite anyone that wants in.

Do be prepared to wait several days. After a player sends you an invite, they say it can take up to 48 hours to be notified, but it can be longer. After that you'll get a message and be prompted to download an app called Preview or something like that, and you'll be tempted to think you're in-- but you're not! You've just entered the waiting room.

After downloading the app, you can use it to check the status of your preview application. It will say "pending" for up to-- you guessed it! 48 hours. For me it was actually longer, and I think only business days count.

That said, backwards compatibility is working OK for me, at least on one title-- doing a video let's play of Mass Effect 1 and I've already switched it over to the new box.