They said that in the 1.6.3 patchnotes. Theres a problem with the character creator. Your contact list is empty because all chars got whiped when they patched 1.6.3. They copied over EU Characters. So we also can test 2 times as NA players.
Ahh, I see the "cannot modify character appearance" in the notes. Of course this raises the question why I was able to modify templates in 1.61 and 1.62.
Also I am almost positive last time my contact list was not empty in previous iterations of the PTS patch even when it was the EU's turn.