The Division 2 continues to get a steady stream of fun content and challenges, but what players are really waiting for is the game’s first epic 8-player raid, Operation Dark Hours. which was initially revealed in the Year One roadmap last month. Anyone blasting through the endgame of The Division 2 is looking forward to this new challenge, but will it be possible to play it early? Such as on the newly-launched The Division 2 PTS?
It’d be extremely cool if that was the case, but has Ubisoft announced anything like that? Will the Dark Hours raid be available to test on the PTS? If not, what is the PTS being used for, and is there actually any way to play the raid early? Does it even have a release date right now? And of course, what is this PTS thing anyway? We’ve got the answers below.
What is The Division 2 PTS?
The Division 2 PTS, or to give it its full title of “Public Test Server,” is a special server that players can sign up for in order to test the various features of The Division 2 early, before they go up live on the main server and are playable by everyone. Ubisoft announced the creation of the Public Test Server in its latest development update. It’ll be used to test and balance new features planned for forthcoming updates. It’s beta testing, basically.
Is The Division 2 PTS only available on PC?
As of right now, the Public Test Server for The Division 2 is only available for PC users. This is generally the case with most games that have test servers of this time, as it’s presumably easier to get them running on PC, and having all the extra features to test put into them. There’s also performance issues to take into account, which Ubisoft is probably capable of doing for themselves with closed systems like consoles.
How can I sign up for the Public Test Server?
Anyone who owns The Division 2 on PC will be able to access the PTS through Uplay, when new features are available to try on it. If you check in your games library on Uplay, next to the icon for The Division 2 you’ll see a separate one for “Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 PTS” which you’ll need to install separately. Do so, and you can enter the PTS when it’s ready, provided there’s something to test of course.
Can you test the Operation Dark Hours raid on The Division 2 PTS?
With Ubisoft wanting to test all the new features and fixes of the next big title update, which will include Operation Dark Hours, surely the raid will be the main thing the publisher will want to get right? Is The Division 2 Dark Hours raid available to play early and test on the Public Test Server? Unfortunately, it is not. Ubisoft has confirmed that access to the new raid will not be part of any testing on the PTS, so you’ll just have to wait and play it with the rest of us.
What can you test on The Division 2 Public Test Server?
If the Operation Dark Hours 8-player raid is not going to be playable in any form on the game’s Public Test Server, what’s the point of it? What features and fixes are Ubisoft actually getting us to play on the PTS? Basically, the PTS is to test any updates and balance changes coming to the game before they go live. While it does not include the raid, all of the other features and bugfixes of the game’s upcoming Title Update 3 will be available on the PTS for players to try out. Those players can then report any bugs or problems to the team to be sorted out before they go live on the main servers.
While the Dark Hours raid is not coming to the PTS, there’s still plenty of juicy stuff for The Division 2 players to see and play early. The Ubisoft Massive team says that it will be announcing the exact schedule of the features coming to the Public Test Server for players to try out, and the various PTS phases, over the next few days, so stay tuned to social media if you’re interested.
Is there any way to try the Dark Hours raid before launch?
As the Operation Dark Hours raid is such a big detail, it’s understandable that players are desperate to get a go on it as quickly as possible. Surely such a big and important update to the game, with as many moving features as an 8-player raid, will require some form of testing? Will there be a separate beta test outside the PTS perhaps? Unfortunately, that’s simply not the case. Basically, Ubisoft is looking to maintain the surprise, and don’t want any players getting early access to the raid and spoiling its secrets. As the team notes, they want “to ensure the entire community is able to discover it and compete at the same time upon release.”
What is The Division 2 raid release date?
As we’ve established, it seems we’ll all have to wait until the proper release date to try out The Division 2 Dark Hours raid. But when is that? It was originally supposed to be next week, on April 25, but now the release date has been bumped to May. As the team says in the latest community post, “we want to make sure that we’ve properly tested the large amount of balance changes that are coming to both PvE and PvP and listen to your feedback about the changes before introducing the raid.” So we’ll all just have to be patient, sorry.
