... or answers are ... Complete -
No major changes from what we first got ... the game was pretty much done, as beta tesing should imply. One excpetion may be the retro dungeons ... I did not find them in beta testing, so I assume that was added afterwards - but could be wrong.
Peak -
No, we got to the peak in plenty of time ... and ascended (or at least I did). I assume the bug was from a last minute tweak or a new build that did not pick up a previous fix for that issue. As I recall, it had to do with some in game camera logic ... about the ground shaking effect (to make it look like the ground is shaking).
Monastery -
At first yes, we always started at the Monastery. Then as things progressed, we were instructed to play our various Wizardry 7 saves to get the varying starting points (if we had them). No, we were not given any way to boost ... someone could have looked into editing at that time, to do so, but that would have taken time away from playing/testing the game (so I did not).
My features - unique critters
I was testing during the time that Wizards & Warriors came out, so was playing both at one point (gave up on W&W after a while). One of the things I noticed that was different between the two games was the "cookie cutter" replication of monsters.
In W&W, when you encounter a group of things, they are all identical. Hit a group of rogues with a Flame Drop and watch the "Roxbury boys" start dancing ... all to the same tune. The all react at the same instant and move exactly the same.
In Wiz 8 (beta), I noticed that there was variation: some rougues were left-handed, some right handed, within a single group. Not a big deal, but a nice touch. In discussing this with a friend (Marc), one of us came up with the idea of additional variance.
This is especially noticeable with a group of the various weeds (Crimson Poppy, Rank weed, etc.). The suggestion made was to vary the cadence, tempo, range, etc. that the monsters move, when idle. Take a look next time you have a group of weeds and watch two of them ... they swing back and forth at different rates.
My features - stop motion
I noted when trying to target individual bats at a distance, that between them being small and flapping up and down, they were very difficult to target. So, I suggested they give us a way to stop the motion, while in combat, to make targeting easier. I don't recall why, but it seemed a difficult request (to implement) at the time I made it .... so I made the additional suggestion that they just use the CTRL key. They said that was such a good suggestion, that I would have got a T-Shirt .. if they had T-shirts to give out 
So, that feature is all mine and the one I am most proud of.
My unimplemented features - couch diving
I thought it would be funny if, in the Monastery, you could search the couches (up by where you get the key to the bell room) and find some extra coin. I imagined a popup blurb about "you go couch-diving and come up with 50 gold" would have been in keeping with the Wizardy humor. Alas, this suggestion did not make it in the game.
I'll have to check the old PC to see if my reports to Sir-Tech are still around and there are any other interesting tid-bits.
Tools for Wizardry(r) 7
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