Had a fully geared level 82 CL alt I was working on. Figured I’d PTR Boost it to get to 100 so I could play with all the new CL stuff. OOPS. All my gear (including Andy + RoSS + 8/12 GAs) POOF, gone (not on ground, not in chest) replaced with… crap.
Don’t be me; if you do this, unequip & store all gear first.
Edit: Also wiped my Paragon boards…
Wait this will happen to any character you use on the PTR??
That’s why I started a new character!
Does it matter? I thought what was on the PTR was a copied character.
Did you lose the stuff when you log back into the live environment? They should not be linked like that.
Characters were copied from the live build to PTR for convenience, but this is a separate instance of the game, and of your character. It will not effect the gear on your live character.
If you boost any ‘Copied’ character it would seem. So just don’t boost a copied character and you’ll be fine. Only applies to the PTR obviously, won’t affect anything on the live servers.
Well, it matters in the sense that I had a build ready to go to test CL and now I have no Ubers, no MW GAs with tempered affixes, have to reset my Paragon boards, etc i.e., I lost hours of time and would hate for others to have the same experience.
Does it matter beyond that? Naw, JBoTS (just bits on the server). 
Also they generally take a copy from a bit back, not like last night, but maybe a week or two ago or even the start of s4.
I just logged in, I can see why people are confused. I don’t have my latest gear, just a snapshot from before. And I have all other gear waiting to be imported into my stash, which is why I think it may have been from S4 start.
This is an issue as we would like to test the PTR with all our gear and masterworks and tempers with certain characters that may be below 100.
The character boost gives no warning that your gear will be deleted, all tempers and masterworks lost.
It will erase all the gear on the character you boost to 100. And tempers and masterwork and resets paragon.
This is now confirmed and pinned in the PTR forum but needs to be pinned here too @pezradar (not that at commands work, but hey…)
How come my characters gear is old, it is not the same gear that I had on this morning. All my gear was 12/12 and now only 1/2 of it is fully master worked. I realized this when I was struggling to kill things I normally wipe out. Not Cool.
On Friday Adamses said on Campfire Chat that they copied the characters to PTR yesterday, so based on my calculations your character should have the gear from last Thursday.
The copy comes from a snapshot that may have been earlier.
You won’t always get a snapshot of your latest gearing in PTR. They use a most recent backup, not the actual live data.
yeah, I just did this myself so not even going to try the PTR. no warning about it and just lots all the ubers i was wearing for my spinto win build.
First time playing a Diablo PTR - any chance they’ll boost the XP gain rate significantly so people can test level 100 builds?
Can we get a notice in-game? I tested out the quest line with my sub-100 character, figured I’d boost it to 100, and like everyone else, lost it all. I’ve got a couple of other toons to try, but my barb was my faceroll character 
Just talk to the NPC in Zarbinzet to get to 100
I have tried PTR just did it with my barb from season. and i thought yes now i money so i can reroll my amulet and i did and got CDR. so far so good. But when i log back to Season my amulet are gone replaced with a crappy one, not fun
You people cannot be real. Of course changes made on PTR are not reflected on live.