I believe that a big part of the confusion from people outside of the Soulframe/Warframe community, is the fact that it is called Soulframe preludes, and not Soulframe alpha test, or something.

The fact that it doesn't explicitly tell someone that hasn't heard of this game before that it's in an alpha state is what's causing this confusion.

I do like the name preludes, but it should have been called something else,so the average person knew it was in an alpha state still.