Testnet is not only for Bitshares Devs, but for partnering companies, business on top of it, gateway developers, 3rd party platforms that would like to integrate with, etc. It has the same importance as the real node (mainnet)
Would love to see some comments and ETA's on this
That's your opinion, and I agree that's how it *should* be. Reality is, however, that testnet is a volunteer effort, like so many other things in our community. testnet.bitshares.eu belongs to xeroc, who is rather overworked anyway.
If you want to get this done, find someone who will do it, and create a worker proposal or have it funded otherwise.
What you're really highlighting here is a fundamental problem of our DAC. We need management. For the UI we have Bill and his team, but we need something similar for the backend stuff. Decentralization is a very nice concept in theory, but it's not helpful if you want to get something done.