Wait... No Public Test Server for this game?

[Tupsi]

This game would HUGELY benefit from one.

I'm curious - How would FFXIV ARR benefit hugely from handing players early access to the next patch and expansion so they can formulate strategies, tear down mechanics, sort out loot pools and find all the hidden nicknacks in the forth coming update?

I mean, you do realize public test servers 99% of the time has very few people actually...testing things, right? This is why even XI's is usually barren, because they only add stuff they want tested and players can't get a "free preview" so they stopped caring.

Not all PTR's are solely for bug-fixing. Many are for feedback on implementations & the like.

As Nekodar mentioned, a PTR for this game would require significant restrictions.

But SE could very well host a Test Realm for new systems.

Think if we could've gotten our hands on Atma, Hunts, Frontline, Wolves Den, all early.

The horrors this could have saved with our feedback.

Not all PTR's have to be about early-advantage or prerelease Raid practice.

PTRs are for bug finding and testing - At least, that's what they're designed for. It's like Alpha and Beta testing these days:

Alpha = Pay us for early access to the game.
Beta = Here's a demo of the game, if you find a bug..remember it's beta, we say it's beta so you can't complain about bugs in the demo!

Pretty much lost all meaning as to what they're for. So while yes, it could be used for feedback, handing out free preview does nothing but further delay content patches to throw in "feedback" from players who almost always just want things with less work (seen this a lot in other games with PTRs where content goes from challenging to essentially point a-b for best rewards in the game.)