To PTR or not to PTR

As a raider who is used to at least 2-3 challenging raids a week, WoW can become a little bit dull. Our guild officers do a great job at keeping us interested in the game: Of course Sartharion 3D every week, working on Malygos time achievement and this week we have 2 groups of 20 people each planned for Naxx to spice things up.

Due to the fact that we will soon complete mostly all heroic raids achievements and the PTR for 3.1 will hit the servers very soon, the officers came up with the idea of raiding the PTR and its Ulduar encounters. The idea is to practice, having something to do at all and to reward anyone who shows up there will be dkps as well.

Me, I have been to a PTR once at the end of BC right before 3.0.2. I had nothing else to do and it was fun for like an 30 minutes to try some new specs and talents. Of course there were no new instances in this patch so there was nothing interesting to do on the PTR. I never played a beta. And for me both PTR and beta testing are very much double-edged swords, with many attractive points but big downsides as well, so that’s what we are going to look at.

Yes sir, PTR please:

• Practice: Raiding on a PTR will make you a better raider I guess. Because there won’t be as detailed strategies available as for live boss encounters. You might have to think for yourself, think outside the box and work with the lineup available as good as possible.
• Having something to do: Probably more important now than it was ever before. In BC there was never a time where I, with one of the two guilds I was in, would have had the luxury of going to the PTR. There were always bosses to kill. And even farm content could slow you down sometimes (Yes I’m talking to you Mr. Archimonde). But right now every competitive guild, be it 10 or 25 man, who has most of the stuff on farm could think about visiting the PTR.
• New content: Everyone on the PTR will see and play new content as early as no one else. Down a boss on PTR and you can go on and brag how you killed the guy when he still was hard and buggy.
• Bugfixing: All the glory apart, let’s not forget the point of a PTR: Testing, reporting bugs and giving feedback to blizzard. The higher the quality and feedback we players give those devs, the better the end-result
• DKP: Well that’s probably just my guild but earning dkps is always fun

Stay away, evil PTR:

• Spoiling the fun: I love the excitement of a new patch on the horizon, guessing every Wednesday if the patch might go live or not and then finally enter new content with new or changed talents.
• Loosing quality time: PTRs are buggy, PTRs suffer lags. Even if it is all new and exciting, it might feel less epic than on live, especially when many encounters are locked out and you do really only very specified testing of boss fights. If Ulduar isn’t really hard you might find it boring much earlier than you would have without PTR time.
• Bug testing: Many people get a pay check for testing products or can at least do it for free, WoW players pay for it. And as beautiful as it is if some hardcore guild kills a boss full of bugs and glitches with a crazy workaround strategy (be it on live or on PTR), is that really for the broad semi-hardcore raiding mass?
• To what end on live server? Actually the only thing you win with PTR testing is being able to insta-kill bosses you have tested. This means you might get a faction first or even a server first. This might seem a cool goal but for me the price is rather high.
• Patching thingy: Downloading the PTR patch and copying your characters is annoying and stops many people from visiting the PTR. And yes, PTRs don’t like addons, so you might run with less addons than you’d like.

What’s your oppinion on PTRs? Did you ever got on one or even raided? Does your guild plan to raid Ulduar on PTR, and if yes, are you a rather casual or hardcore guild?