Do any raids yet catpokes? I have teso for AvA and while I may play BGs from time to time here, my pvp focus will be in teso(and fps games), if it last. So raids will primarily be my reason for sticking around.
Also since you are 50 and experienced a lot, how bad do you think this move to 4 weekends only for end game testing is going to hurt them?
I've done Experiment X-89 in Genetic Archives and a lot of gold medal runs in heroics/adventures. The difficulty of X-89 is on-par for an introductory raid. Player responsibility is pretty high because destroying a platform that's not along the edge substantially reduces the time you have to kill the boss. Tuning was pretty solid; in entry level gear we were very tight on DPS with near-"perfect" play, but it would become easy with better gear. One thing I give credit to Wildstar for is that none of their bosses feel exactly the same. I was worried that telegraphs would really limit the style of encounters they could have, but so far every dungeon/raid boss is relatively unique. If you're looking for HM World of Warcraft tuning and difficulty, this probably isn't what you want. While the bosses are unique and require individuals to perform well, I wouldn't say they're mechanically too hard:
X-89: 1) Destroy "edge" platforms while the tank rotates around the the map to create the largest surface area possible. 2) Position yourself to not get knocked off when he casts knockback. 3) Rotate around the boss when he spins and spews.
This isn't a lot to have to deal with. It's a bit different from standard raiding because aiming matters. The pace at which platforms detonate is fairly fast as well.
In terms of enjoyability, a lot of that depends on your class. You'll notice stalker players (in pve not pvp) talk about how much they enjoy their rotation/mechanics/whatever. Not every class is like this. Personally, I think Esper DPS is really boring (but the damage is okay). It's a largely stationary class that is basically: apply magic debuff on CD, spam "fireball" to 5 combo points, cast 5 combo point finisher and repeat. Everything else is off GCD free damage/combo point builder that you use on CD.
In terms of the end game testing changes... most testers that I trust agree that it's not enough time. Class design, class balance, and item balance are a mess. Most of elder game is untested because the active population (at least on Exile) are mostly hardcore pvpers. Adventures are very buggy and sometimes impossible to complete without resetting, which is awful because they are sometimes longer than an hour. The dungeons I've done can be buggy too. In skullcano, we wouldn't get credit for a boss kill and the door after him wouldn't open. I have faith that the optimization passes will come. 1-36 leveling content is polished enough that people won't notice significant flaws in open beta. However, there is little to no transparency on how they are designing their classes and balancing them. Aodz (the class developer) and Buiden (not sure what he is?) work on fixing bugs and talk about them, but everything else about classes is mostly a mystery to players.
To test level 50 content, they really should have premades with standardized gear to get more people involved, 36-50 is the worst kind of grind. Most quests are kill x mobs, but you can't even turn your brain off like Asian grinders because you have 12 of them at once and have to go find new mobs to grind, constantly.
Edit: It definitely feels like the developers are being pushed by execs to get this game out. The tone of the developers didn't give much indication that closed beta was ending soon. No one really expected it, especially because they JUST released a major patch that broke a lot of things. It seems that they're worried about something, their metrics say people are quitting beta after about 4 weeks according to the forums.
