Some players expected the new Aion PTS to be an easy way to access top-notch gear, others wanted new content right away, and even more others just want to PvP... But you can't make everyone happy!

This leads to the second problem that many players have with Aion's PTS: the experience rates just aren't high enough to justify the possibility that you could lose your character in a wipe a month later!

Just to clarify, experience gain on the Aion Public Tester Servers has been boosted to 4.5x what it normally is. That means that if you took four months of playing to hit level 50, it should, technically, take you about a month and a half to hit level 50 on the PTS (given that quest EXP has not been scaled up appropriately, with only monster EXP being amplified).

Unfortunately, the one problem with constantly playing on some Public Test Servers is that, yes, character wipes can take place without warning. What is important to note, however, is that NCsoft has opted, for now, to run their PTS almost like a regular server. If you look at other MMORPGs with test realms, like World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings Online, they only open them up for player testing when they have very specific patches or content to test out. In this way, when these companies do open up their Public Test servers, they create premade characters or allow character copying because they want players to really focus on trying out the new content.

In the case of Aion, however, since much of the game play testing has already been completed in Korea, it seems that, instead of pushing players to check out specific content, NCsoft is opting to encourage North American and European players to really invest some time into their PTS characters. According to rumors, the Korean Aion test servers all run on about 7x experience rates and, if NCsoft really wanted players to focus on checking out content, then these same boosted experience rates would facilitate that as well. It does seem interesting that the North American Public Test Servers are running on a "mere" 4.5x experience rate, which says, to me, that NCsoft might have some ulterior motives beyond simple content testing.

Update: After speaking with Aion's North American Community Manager, Andrew "Tamat" Beegle, he's noted that the Korean servers are, in fact, running the same experience rate as the North American Servers.

As well, since these Public Test Servers are up with no new content to test, it does reduce the likelihood of full character wipes. Just speaking from logic, would you waste the money to host a brand new server without any testable content, encourage players to create characters on that server, and then wipe everything out after your latest patch went live? On the other hand, remember that even if the test servers go without a character wipe for a full five years, NCsoft will always warn players that they "can" wipe their servers just because, due to the volatile nature of these servers in particular, NCsoft needs to watch its back for any liabilities.

What most players should realize is that, if these Public Test Servers are to become a permanent fixture in Aion, this really isn't the first time anyone has done this. For example, in Ragnarok Online, there used to be a full-time test server that operated just like a regular server, except for two small differences. One was that the test-server got patches earlier than the regular server, and sometimes these patches were a bit buggy, but the second difference was that the test server ran on boosted rates in order to make up for the occasional server glitch. For a number of years, players ran their full MMO lives on the test server, and they enjoyed a faster-paced game than if they had to play on a regular server.

Ultimately, the Aion Public Test Servers are really what we, as players, make of them. If there are hordes of us who really enjoy the boosted rates, then we need to encourage NCsoft and indicate what we do, and don't like. Too many players are looking to the Aion Public Test Servers to give them everything they want when, in fact, our community is just so divided in our needs that we can't figure out what it is we really want from this MMORPG. The Public Test Servers are a perfect opportunity for us to find out.