At long last, The Division is getting a public test server (PTR). Since its debut in March, Ubisoft Massive's alleged answer to Destiny has been stagnating, partially due to the fact there have been so many glitches and errors over the past few months that players became fed up with everything and left for greener pastures.
A public test server would have been the perfect way to tackle these issues ahead of time, but Ubisoft — for whatever reason — didn't have one.
Now, it appears that Ubisoft is wising up and will launch a PTR — something that should have been done months ago. Of course, it's better late than never, and The Division could certainly use it.
The announcement for the PTR came in a blog post Wednesday, where Ubisoft said the new server comes as a result of feedback from the announcement of The Division's major 1.4 patch last week.
"As many pointed out after we announced Update 1.4, a great way to involve you would be to let you try the update before its release," Ubisoft said. "We are thrilled to confirm that we will be opening a Public Test Server on PC for The Division in the near future."
Public test servers give developers the ability to test updates and new content for online games in a live environment, with the biggest draw being that they allow players to expose various bugs and issues so that they can be fixed by the development team before they go live. Past issues like disappearing characters and a broken matchmaking system could have likely been avoided, had a PTR been in place.
This announcement only reaffirms the notion that Ubisoft is serious about trying to get The Division back. It announced earlier this week that it would fly players to Sweden to help shape the upcoming 1.4 patch (the offer is now closed), and now, there's this. It's a great move, too: according to Steamcharts, compared with the 113,877 peak players the game had in March 2016, it only managed to have 5,213 peak players in August 2016. In fact, its player base dropped by nearly 50 percent between August and the month before it.
In the meantime, all that is known about the PTR is that it will have features not yet available in the public game (obviously) and that it will be available on PC but not consoles. A release date has yet to be revealed, but it's likely Ubisoft will make the announcement alongside the full overview for update 1.4 during the live stream event on Sept. 13.
