The odds

I will just leave this here and check back at some point.

Another thing to note is that the timer doesn't seem to exclude those who already are in Beta. I've seen quite a lot of Beta Members come up on the timer. Depending on your point of view, that might be taken as "wasting" a time slot (but it's obviously more straight forward to program and you're guaranteed to get a name from the list at about the same speed each time - if you had to go back and get another one after checking for Beta Membership, several times in a row, you could end up with long delays causing the timer gadget to time out or something).

The timer shouldn't be selecting beta members. The only way that can happen (without some new bug) is if the account is activated while it's in the timer's queue. The timer selects a few accounts ahead of time; it doesn't pick them on-the-spot every 5 minutes. If you were to be the account that will show up in 15 minutes and activate a friend invite in that time, you'll still show up on the timer because it has already selected you. This has happened before, but I think it's extremely rare.

If you see the timer selecting accounts that are already beta members, report it so the devs can look into it.

its like watching paint dry, i just finished skyrim and nothing else is satisfying me, Come on gimme key :3

well i dont dislike this lotto, although the chances are slim.
but im also waiting for 2 other betas with weird mechanics for invites like "friends only"/"highly active contributors (only native english speakers)" with key rates of some hundred every 3 months. the worst mechanic IMO is the "first come first serve" giveaways on social platforms, forcing you to use them constantly only for that one purpose even if you dont have a use for it otherwise.
in the meantime i can watch the dev videos again and again, hoping some longtime members here get keys (like those christmas key, nice idea).

Let's see if I can get my luck working :D

X crossing my fingers :)

I hope it comes sometime this week :-)

this game looks awesome. I guess ill just watch the paint dry/watch the pot boil

@Whiteboy88

It looks like you're correct (re. timer not showing existing beta members) - although here's why it appears to:

After reading your note, I was prepping a screenshot to show the "beta-ness", as the first person on the timer when I went to look showed as a "beta member" in their profile - see image here http://imgur.com/4pFlv where I've pasted the profile window next to the timer. I had checked the Upcoming user too, and there was no "Beta Member" tag for them.

Just before I posted this message, though, the Upcoming user had now become the Latest, and I decided to re-check the profile, only to find the "Beta Member" tag in place. So it seems that whilst a user is the Latest Random, they are tagged as a "Beta Member".

I thought I had seen Upcomings tagged with "Beta Member", but based on your explanation I was obviously mistaken.