It seems everyone is still trying to catch up from all the news from this years GDC, and GameSpot has posted an interview with Brad Wardell with the topic being Elemental: War of Magic. 

“To begin with, Wardell reiterated his commitment to getting the game into a testable, playable state earlier than usual. Stardock plans to run a "beta zero" phase, where a working prototype of the game, using extremely simple art assets, will be made available to a small group of beta testers to thoroughly test gameplay--pretty art assets, such as the oil-portrait-like textured characters you've seen in screenshots, will be added later during subsequent phases of beta, which will test the game many, many times to ensure that it ends up being a highly polished, well-balanced, and enjoyable finished product.”

Read the full preview at GameSpot.