Hello ZOS,
Please make PTS a copy of the live production database. You'll catch a lot more issues before they hit live. When you are ready for the next PTS build, copy live to PTS. Apply patch 1.4.0. Commence testing. We will have our characters over there. Our guilds. Our PvP campaigns. Our gear. Our crafting. Our bank. Our mounts. Players with open quests scattered all around Tamriel and at all levels. And so on. It is a really gimped testing experience right now. You can still have the Templates for creating a fresh VR12 character, but that needs to complement testing with our live characters, not be the only testing possible.
I assume this will be time consuming, but you only have to do it every 6 or 8 weeks. One of these updates you are going to have a really, really disastrous rollout. Something that would have been immediately obvious if it was a snapshot of live that people played like live and could easily compare/contrast to their everyday playing experience.
And when that truly disastrous rollout happens and you take a huge PR hit, you are going to wish you did this.