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Brendan Greene confirms that the PUBG test servers will be staying online until version 1.0 releases next week.

The PUBG test servers have been a little hit or miss. From last-minute availability to stints cut short by stability issues, you couldn’t exactly set your watch by them.

They are incredibly useful, however, for a game still in Early Access. Mostly for PUBG Corp. (a new division of parent company Bluehole, setup especially for the battle royale behemoth) to test the outcome of tweaks and improvements, but also for inquisitive folks like us to kick the tyres and see what’s coming next.

Here are seven things we learned in the last major round of PUBG test server runs, when vaulting and climbing made its public debut.

Now vaulting and climbing are on the PUBG test servers again, along with a huge swathe of changes to audio, vehicle and weapon physics, and some new guns and vehicles. There are also massive UI changes, a new menu and front screen… oh, and did we mention that it also grants access to the new Miramar desert map?

The good news is, Miramar is really cool. We especially like the new VW camper-inspired bus and the pickup truck, and the fact this map has been designed with climbing and vaulting in mind means there are some really interesting routes for getting around. We’ll share some thoughts on that after we’ve had a bit more time with it.

And the really good news is that we’ll be getting plenty of time with Miramar: the PUBG test servers will be staying live now, continuously, until PC version 1.0 launches on December 20th, 2017.

Well, we say ‘continuous’ but that’s not without the usual caveats. For starters, there will be maintenance, upgrades and patches taking place on the PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds test servers, which will typically mean that regions or game modes – or sometimes, the whole game – will be unavailable at times.

There are also going to be issues. It’s the test server and PUBG Corp. are still shaking things out, so there will be general issues and instability. We’ve seen plenty of stuttering and jerking in game, and a fair few client crashes in the past couple of days. That also includes yo-yoing in and out of the client a few times and – by the time the game’s finally loaded – finding we’re already in the air or on the ground.

But with almost two weeks of continuous user testing on the PUBG test servers (and the new map), here’s hoping they get everything sorted for the game’s release proper.

The Xbox One version, meanwhile, launches into Xbox Game Preview tomorrow.

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