"Today on ptr, XXX guild killed X boss. A GM deathouched this and that, and here's 5 new
epics that drops from the boss. Download video here...."

Common headline today, on the various "wow-news sites" around the world.
But do we want all this information? Do we want movies and strategies of bosses
not ingame yet? And what purpose does PTR really serve?

Personally, I liked how we did it with my guild in Naxxramas.
We looked up the boss we were facing at the moment on wowwiki (if there were any info up),
checked it's spells, abilites, and enrage time (if it had any).
That was the information we went with as we did our first pull, and then worked from that.
Later on, as other guild progress faster then us, there were of course more information avaliable,
but spells and abilites, that what was we knew when we pulled Kel'Thuzad the first time.

Most guild still seemed to keep their tactics for themselves, and I remember
(as we were just about to start on them) when the first video of a Four horsemen kill was
realesed. This was a big deal back then, as I can remember.

Today, you can't even turn your head without stumbling on a full write-up of some boss
with complementing video attached to it.
I can live with this, when it's bosses that has been ingame, and guilds have struggled to get there.

But on PTR?
On PTR you have guilds setting up raids together with GM's. Bosses and trash gets "deathtouched".
All loot is getting data-mined, faction rewards posted on websites all over.
So my question is, do we want this?

My own answer is no.
A big part of why I raid, is to face new encounters, figure out how they work and how to beat
them. That's why raiding is rewarding for me.
All the effort you put in to something equals the reward recieved when you finish it.
The rush when getting a boss down just seem to fade more and more.
I still refuse to watch videos of encounters I have'nt personally beated yet,
but alot of the information and the tactics used still come from them, that's unavoidable
today.

I simply don't wanna know exactly what awaits me, and I doubt I'm the only one.
Why I react on this now, is beacuse up until now, this has mostly been on live servers.
And information have'nt been avaliable this fast.

But now you can see endbosses being fought on PTR, mutliple videos of bosses being killed,
full loottables etc etc.

ON PTR!
This content is'nt even ingame yet.

I fully understand the guilds doing it, hell if I had the time for it, I would like to do it myself.
But I can't neglect the fact that Blizzard is using these guilds as free labour, doing a job
a in-house raid group should do.
I don't know if it's a deliberate marketing strategy from Blizzard aswell, but it sure looks like
it, by letting all this information come out, to build a hype.

To put things in perspective, you can on PTR today, get full T5 in a box, when in reality,
there's not a player in the world who has that.

There should'nt even be a use of PTR, if Blizzard would set up a proper test-group with signed
NDA's to test coming content. This could be done by freelancers anywhere in the world.
Does Blizzard even have a QA department for wow?
Beacuse it's their jobs that guilds raiding on PTR are doing.
There's no valid excuse for Blizzard to realese a "unkillable" end boss like Cthun.
This should be tested in-house, and not by players on live or ptr's.

PTR's are nothing else then a big marketing machine and free labour.

And for me, all this "leaking" of information from PTR is ruining alot of the game for me.
I can choose not to take part of it, but it will still reach me, no matter what.

So, in my opinion, either remove ptr's completly, or atleast make them free from GM involvment (deathtouching).
All testing of raidbosses (or any kind of testing) can be done internal, and I fail to see the reason of this being done
by players in the extent it is today.

(edit to clarify)

This is just a dumb thread.