I plan on becoming a Founder and sinking a good bit of money into it. That said, with the most recent newsletter, this was included:

"One of the much anticipated choices the Founders will have is the 5th sub-faction for each race."

Do you think this is a good idea to limit the vote to just Founders? Should this vote be open to the entire community or do you feel it's fine being reserved for those who have bought into the game early?

Please discuss the reasoning behind your choice!

I was indifferent to it really, until someone brought up the fact that people can reasonably just spam the votings with 68 accounts each and thus screw with the actual desires of the entire community.

I asked if it was a worthy compromise (if indeed we wont see anyone aside from Founders take the vote) for the Founders to make a thread in each race subforum with a poll and a chance for the non-Founders to plead their case as to why they think a certain subfaction is the best choice.
Then the Founders who read through it can basically vote in the non-Founders stead based on how convinced they are. Sounds a bit lame and condesending i know, but i guess its better than to leave the non-Founders out to dry.

I personally have no favorites in the 4 races (aside from liking the IF most out of the LSM chapters, but i wont play LSM and the god legions are all but confirmed to not even be in the voting with all the repetitions about god dedication being a post launch thing) so ill be unbiased towards any explanations.

It was originally going to be a community vote now its just a founders privilege alot of last minute changes are being made and all of them revolve around preorders. Also just saying people who have money make decisions for everyone is a horrible precedent to make and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Oh and bots aren't the thing you should be worried about ruining your precious "Founders" club no they aren't the ones you should be worried about. "Even though they've already dug deep into this forum and some arbitrary encoded forum link isn't going to stop them from being in that subforum aswell" If its money that matters guess who is considered to have payed more then all of you combined? There is no choice GW has already made the choice.

Votebots would leave bad taste in my mouth..

consider the following:

founder=day one community

becase founder will last until some week before the closed beta (you can reallocate the point you can buy more points etc etc).

don't need to buy the founder the 10-12 june, you can wait.

founder will cost 40$ probally less than the complete game (i don't know but i can image the game at release will be 50$)

I suppose also that the fifth faction pool will stay open until the end of the founder program (so later founder can vote).

I voted - Yes.

I guess, if community could vote for the 5th sub-faction and it'll be available to the founders-only, perhaps they'd be more willing to join the program? Either way, i'm game.

And it would be great if you could pay more to nullify other peoples votes because hey you paid even more than them and its just business.

That might lead to the odd situation of the community voting for the faction they least want to play, in order to inflict it on the founders and not prevent them being unable to play it when new factions are added after launch.

Probably not, as the devs have indicated factions aren't just reskins, they're built into the game with their own unique differences and flavours. That would require a much earlier cut-off date.

On the founder-only voting for the 5th faction, my immediate reaction (as a likely founder), was to dislike it. I can see the benefit of avoiding vote-spamming, and the forum's well-demonstrated inability to prevent spambots raises questions about this being a risk, but I still voted for 'yes' for the community vote. There are better ways to limit the impact of spambot voting than making it only available to founders.

I feel that the 5th faction is an important decision to put to all engaged future players, not just those spending cash in advance.

I'm also slightly concerned that founders appear to have a special voice when it comes to discussing ideas about the game. Fine if its about feedback on features in the game, which only the Founders have had the chance to play around with. But more general discussions about how it could/might/should/shouldn't work? Personally, I think that should be open to everyone - just as it is now.