Public Test Realms (PTR) have become Blizzard’s primary method to test new content before its release to ensure that everything is ready for public consumption.  Players swarm to the PTR to look at every aspect of the game that is changing and very rapidly analyze, digest and then regurgitate the changes back to other players in easy to handle chunks of information.  Is this a good thing for most players though?  Should content be available before release?  Byron “Messiah” Mudry asks the question “Are PTRs a good thing?”

There are a few big positive things that PTRs have going for them.  Firstly, and probably most importantly they allow Blizzard to get a huge number of people looking at the content, mechanic, and every other change that has been done. This allows Blizzard to find out very quickly if there are any issues or problems and if the changes are working the way they anticipated that they would.  No amount of in-house testing will find everything, neither will public testing, but the more testing options you have the more issues you will find.  Also, in-house testing is more likely to not find possible abuses when compared to power hungry end-game raiders looking for every single extra point of DPS.

Find out what Byron "Messiah" Mudry has to say on the whole topic of Are PTRs a good thing for the game?