They're taking so long because the "free test" doesn't exist yet. Believe it or not, beta tests do not exist primarily for your personal entertainment. They are actually there (at least in principle) to test the game. That said, they're still doing their closed beta testing (where they hand pick a relatively small number of people based on.. *shrug* whatever). When that's done, they'll start open beta to do a stress test on their game/servers. How does this not make sense to you?

What is it they say about silence being golden?