We're starting to get patches that are now offering a lot of content and modifications to the game that are going to be lasting throughout the game's life. Patch 1.18 came out with, evidently, a lack of polish and balance. While I don't doubt that the devs are serious about tweaks and balance, they cannot get everything right just from internal testing.

A public test server allows for a massive amount of people to figure out every way in which to break content, break balance, and find exploits -- that the devs may not have found on their own, and that they might fix before the changes are released to live servers.

Giving this game one or two public test servers would, in my opinion, dramatically improve the quality of future patches.

Please post your thoughts on this.