one of my accounts got a beta invite, downloaded it just fine and then realized that apparently it took the place of the regular EQ launcher in the folder so i was unable to get back to regular EQ until i repaired the launcher and then the beta one was overwritten and so forth. am i suppose to download EQ all over again in a different folder just for the beta? With my internet that would be a real inconvenience for me and take quite some time.
Copy your entire EQ folder into another location... and download/run the beta patcher from the new copy. That way you don't have to download all the files again, just the ones that differ between live and beta.