Maintenance for the week of March 16:
• PC/Mac: No maintenance – March 16
• ESO Store and Account System for maintenance – March 18, 6:00AM EDT (10:00 UTC) - 4:00PM EDT (20:00 UTC)
Yes, the PTS process is rather pro-forma and useless for the most part.
At some point we will probably also get the traditional post-patch "We know we can do better with communicating with the players and we will try to do better moving forward" post from the devs and then... the exact same thing happens all over again.
We will probably be having the same conversation at this time in another patch cycle.