As usual I don't pay attention to the "announcement" section. I never thought it would happen (as most people) and as a result I completely rejected the idea.
Now it seems like a very real possibility.
AverageJoe wrote:To be fair, it doesn't say in that thread that it is indeed happening, only that they're opening it for 30 minutes to see how many people log in to guage interest in joining a vanilla PvE server. There's no guarantee they'll open it, but given it's been a hot topic on the forums since Nostalrius first released and constantly asked for among the players, I imagine the threshold must be set pretty low in order to achieve it.
Considering that they would go as far as they have with setting up a test server, I would say that it's most likely happening, probably in the near future. It's also possible that it will won't happen, just way less likely.