Ahh the timetable that is Steam Time, soon usualy means months away. If your not running on steam time though please turn your clock back 6 months. "Please god dont be steam time" Wait RP was in alpha?
Let me explain - Alpha = Core features / System done. This means you can play it, there will still be a few kinks in the system, otherwise there is not much else to it. Right now it'd be pretty boring to play it because the more fun stuff comes along in beta Beta = This has multiple stages, from the buildup of features right up until the RC RC (Release Candidate) = Consider this the final stages of Beta, ie it's playable, just about complete and it would work if released, however there may be a few sections still being worked on, or redone otherwise it's ready for release.
No. We're not doing a hacky job of sticking it on top of a pre-existing gamemode. And no, RP hasn't been 2 years in the making. We released RP09, realised it sucked dick, focused on DR etc, officially canned RP, and then Whitefang and myself discussed it and we decided to write something from scratch, completely unrelated.