It's just the nature of releasing new content to the server. When the beta server goes up, you're going to get about 100 players on it semi-actively testing stuff. That's great for catching all the big glaring problems, but not so great for polishing the smaller stuff.
Kunark beta was similar, with "forced" participation soon before it was released to live.
I don't really look at it as punishment or anything, it's just a necessary step to getting the content released. It's a contingency so that when Velious is launched to live, there is more guarantee that the release will be smooth.
It sucks for the people who wanted to play on blue this weekend, but the vision of the developers has always been to create an accurate classic server through Velious whether anyone plays on it or not. The success is just a bonus.
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