I’ve only used officials for testlive, and even then the only ones that were decent were the PVE choices, but I still get so bored. A PVE-C Testlive would at least sate some of my PVP hunger by allowing me to build an arena. I don’t even want to think about going to Official Live servers because of the lack of restrictions and a distrust of others.
With so many private servers, it’s still a crap shoot as to which will be around for some time and with actual people. I’ve put months of work in just to see the population dwindle and ultimately get shuttered. The servers I’ve wanted to play on most are hampered by bad ping from being located ‘across the pond’. I still hold hope for finding a decent private server though, as they are much funner than officials with an air of fantasy and decent people.
Another level of polish (bug and AI fixes) and another round of added content (character creation additions and thrall commands) would greatly improve playability and keep people around longer.