Seriously, what is a Release Candidate for ? Why going o RC1, RC2... before going live, instead of staying in "alpha" or something ?
because the version we'll actually get to play is an alpha version. as has every other version been up to this point. the coming patch is "alpha 0.9a".
but between public releases, there are of course maaany incremental changes in versions in the in-dev build, as features and content get added or changed, and problems get fixed.
a release candidate is a still-in-dev build that is
potentially ready for public release. it will then get tested for a bit to find out if there are still any last-moment changes and fixes to be made before it is actually ready. the first couple release candidates are virtually guaranteed to still have some issues that should be fixed before making it public, so then another release candidate is made with those fixes in place.
that is repeated until one release candidate really is polished enough, which then gets released to us. :]
the last public release, the one we've been playing for over a year now, was "alpha 0.8.1a-
RC8", for example. meaning Alex went through 7 other release candidates right before its release, before he was satisfied with it.
of course, there will still be plenty of (hopefully minor) issues in every actual public release, and a few hotfix patches shortly afterwards that fix most of these. that can't ever be entirely avoided, since having hundreds (if not thousands) of players play through the initial release version will invariably turn up bugs or other problems that weren't found during the devs' own playtesting.