Quote Originally Posted by Kazrah View Post
FFXIV does have beta tests for players, and from what I've learned from a couple who have participated in them, there is definitely a strict NDA involved with it.

The PTR would more or less be a means of testing jobs and classes first and foremost. Not only is story something that doesn't exactly need much for testing, but I've already explained in this thread how jobs and classes can be tested even before they get to any story components. Only tweak would be having an option for players who want to not see any elements of the story is to have an option after the job/class test that can either end the test early or to carry on with the transition into the current storyline.
Even if they try to keep story content from being present at all, we'll end up with spoilers of some sort due to data miners. It's dangerous to even be around the XIV community when the preload of the patches/expansions are out, due to data miners analyzing everything and spreading what they can find from it around. The only way to be able to have a PTR without that risk would be to create a separate build of the game that specifically only has the content they want to test out in it, and doesn't have any other files at all, which would take a lot of extra work that they could be putting into actually improving the game and adding content.....