AFAIR we needed it as otherwise you can't set environment variables (too late)

Increasing the threadcount would be interesting but requires much more work firs: our tests are not independent as long as they use a shared database, potentially same index directories, or even the JGroups "isolation" tricks we're using now both in the JGroups module and the Infinispan module are assuming you run a single test in the JVM (it would form a cluster with other running tests). Also it might be dangerous for Byteman tests... so yes I'd love but that's not yet an option :)