To be fair they are testing more than content that requires an NPC leveler. Anyone complaining about not having a lvl up NPC from the jump has either never done a closed beta before or has no idea what they are talking about if they claim they have. There is a large array of data that gets collected and sifted through. Just sayin, if you only want to test content at a certain point in gameplay then do what others do and wait for that portion of the test.
I can sympathize though with the lack of support for meeting the playerbase halfway with say some upgraded rates however.
For the Homunculu system test, I think there would be great providing a alchemist in the correct level so we can just test that, I'm not saying they should give us a 1-99 lvl npc for all classes, but just a npc that turns you into alchemist at correct level so you can test.
We need to scope the tests better. We are still testing general mechanics like leveling, questing, item drop, npcs and a lot of other stuff. Now, if they want to HEAVY test the homunculu, they need to provide the test suit otherwise, players will just not test that. If I need to take hour of my day leveling something that I don't like, juts to test a small part of that, I'll simply not do that, remember, we're not being paid for doing that, all data will be wiped, we just want a proper test suit.
And to be honest, increasing exp would be really bad, it's nice to level and see how the flow will be when we're live.