I rarely do PTR. Usually I just wait for the patch to come around. I read some patch notes before a patch but that’s all I do. Except this time around.
We’re getting a new profession and unlike Jewelcrafting I want to get in on this one right away. Admittedly I got to the PTR late. I could already be done testing how to level Inscription. Instead I am still waiting for my herb bank to transfer. Maybe it already has transferred, I don’t know because the Blizzard page keeps killing my browser. Maybe they could hire someone who knows what they are doing? Or they should make a Web-PTR?
But back to playing on the PTR.
So far I have noticed a few nice little things. (Yes I also noticed Achievements, Statistics, new Talents and Inscription but everybody talks about that *G*)
1. The shadows. I just love them. It makes the world come alive so much more. Flying through outland with your shadow gliding below you. Or seeing a shadow pass over you when someone flies high above. Terrokar looks lovely with all the light and shadow. It sounds like a little thing when they write it in the patch notes, but it is definitely not.
2. New Music. The login screen has new music. I was sick of the old theme. Especially since I often log out by afk the music would be running forever and even when the sound isn’t turned up you can hear it all over the house. And the fresh new Wrath background looks great as well.
3. Early Video Options. Even before logging in you can now change the graphics settings. This is great – of course we won’t be using this a lot but still a thoughtful little addition.
4. New Windowed Mode. The windowed mode now has the option to remove the windows-window-bling (titlebar and border) and the game looks like I am playing full screen on the left display and I can still move easily to the second one for surfing. It’s just the kind of thing that is incredibly nice but so small a change nobody talks about it 
Except me of course.
5. Fewer addons needed. Several classics will be integrated into the default UI: Omen and MobHealth are the two that I noticed. I haven’t played without addons for a long long time but the UI has really come a long way from the first days. But I could not do for very long without …
Indeed it was quite weird to be on the PTR. At first I had no addons, no key-bindings, no macros. Not even my main had been copied yet and so I played a bit vanilla WoW with a level 1 Druid, with no money, no bags and the default UI. <3 Teldrassil.
As soon as Yashima was copied over I started testing addons. A lot of them are already working with the patch (Outfitter, Pitbull, Chinchilla, Mapster, Quartz, ArkInventory, Posessions) but some are not (Bartender4 and Autobar most prominently).
Since files.wowace.com will be going away sometime soon, I don’t think I can do the same as I used to do these last few patches: patch the game and run WAU to update all my addons. I understand that the traffic they get is just way too much (on patchdays they have Terabytes of downloads). So right now I am testing my addons and try to get as many to a working version as possible.
The most important ones still missing I mentionned already.
Right now I have been moving over to WoWI again. It used to be my favorite site until wowace came along. One thing in favor of WoWI and not using WAU: the libraries are internalized and my addon folder looks a lot smaller and neater than before. I can actually see which addons I am using. I might keep it that way …
