Ok.
Well, after that interesting little diversion, I'd like to quote LC's suggestion as it seems like something worth talking about...
As an alternative:
Why not opening up Divinity Original Sin for preorder on Steam and giving every person preordering the game access to the beta version?
Usually people are more forgiving when playing a beta named beta than playing an early access game. It's really just a wording thing but words can be important when it comes to expectations and treatment of games and stuff.
This seems like a great idea to me. Though I'm not overly familiar with steam itself, so I'm not sure exactly how this would work differently to just going the early access route.
Would it get the same amount of exposure? As in would there still be a chance for it to get featured on the front page and other prominent areas? And how would it work since the game is already listed in the steam libraries? Someone made the good point in the comments on Swen's blog post that the game is currently listed as 'Divinity Original Sin', without specifying that it an alpha version. I wonder if this could be changed or if a separate early access (preorder?) version could be named differently. Backers already what they are playing so the current listing doesn't matter so much for them.
Edit: No worries James, personally I really liked what you wrote and took it in the spirit in which I believe it was meant. Indeed, I found that your post had a rather powerful eloquence to it BECAUSE of its modest english. Larian's heart sure seems like it's in the right place, and I'm confident they'll do a great early access 'campaign' if they feel that it's worth a go. Plenty of people are quietly cheering them on, as I'm sure everyone in this thread is, despite any misgivings we may share.