Big Huge Game now offers an open beta of Patch 2 for the Thrones & Patriots expansion for Rise of Nations, their epic real-time strategy game (thanks Frans) . Here's the deal: "This patch includes updates to our versioning system that should take care of the out of sync issues that occur when people with cracked versions of our game try to join legitimate games. The patch also includes balance changes to many nations. - Players using the Patch 2 beta will not be able to play games with those using the Patch 1 version of the game. If you want to continue to play Patch 1 games during the beta test, you can do so by backing up your RoN directory, creating two versions of the game on your computer, before following the installation steps below."