1. Single shard is awesome, it's worked amazingly well for EvE online.
2. I don't know how I feel about Kickstarter campaigns anymore, especially if they offer early access to the game. I feel this lets too much information about the game come out as it's being developed, especially if the pre-alpha/alpha don't have NDA agreements. Being able to see everything little piece of information about the game before it is released seems like it burns people out before they get to play it, it doesn't leave any mystery to the game. This could be a terrible mindset but it's just my opinion.
3. Again I'm all for having as many testers as possible but refer to number to 2 about NDA's.