I never actually got to use any of the pre-4.0 beta features, because I never used any of the betas until after 4.0. I read about them and thought some of them sounded neat and looked forward to trying them, and then they mysteriously disappeared, never to be heard from again. I don't even know whether I should be missing them and requesting them back or not, and by now I've forgotten about most of them.
I like the sound of "editable-galaxy-map", though. If that means I can rearrange the systems manually so they're not so impossible to make out the connections on half the map types, I will happily trade that for a two week delay in AVWW. I'd probably get nearly a month of "new game feel" out of AI War from that just by being able to play on all those map types, because usually when I try to now it's like, "My OCD sense is tingling!" Heh.