A couple of weeks back, Ubisoft announced it was “thrilled to confirm” plans to open a Public Test Server (PTS) for the PC version of The Division. As Andy reported, “the near future” was when the publisher planned to roll out the server—a date which was later confirmed to be Thursday, September 15—however it seems this will now be further away that first thought.
“We mentioned last week on State of the Game that we would be hosting a Special Report for Update 1.4. tomorrow (Tuesday the 13th). We will need to delay this show as at this stage we wouldn't be able to show all of the content we would like to,” reads a Ubisoft update on The Division forums. “While the Special Report format demands that we be more complete in the type of things that we show, we'll be using our weekly State of the Game to give you some more concrete solutions that will be present in Update 1.4.”
The forum post continues: “In other news, the PTS will not be available this Thursday as previously stated. After playing the build with our Elite Task Force it became clear that to have the PTS process be valuable for us in terms of feedback, we would need some more time to include key elements that are critical to the overall Update 1.4 experience.”
Public test servers—servers which allow developers to test updates ahead of time and roll out new game features in a live environment—have served other companies, such as Blizzard, well in the past. Everything from bugs to balancing can be put to the test before reaching the masses, therefore it makes sense Ubisoft is keen to apply this to The Division—particularly ahead of the game's next update, patch 1.4.
“Transparency is something that we know our community wants, and something that we aim to deliver every day. In this instance, it does mean that we need to share our schedule and intentions that are subject to shifting throughout the process,” adds the post. “The alternative of ‘leaving you in the dark’ is not something we see as an option! We're very eager to get this update out to all Agents while bringing you into the development process as much as we can and as soon as we have more information, we'll let you know.”
No word on when The Division PTS will launch following this delay, however we’ll update as and when we find out.
