I’m very excited that the folks at ArenaNet have finally announced when their Guild Wars 2 open beta program will start (and confirmed that the game will be released later in 2012):
Guild Wars 2 has captured the imagination of gamers and media all over the world with its action-oriented combat, its living world full of dynamic events, its highly personalized role-playing experience, and the handcrafted artistry that suffuses every element of the game. Last year, thousands of you joined us at shows and events all over the world to try Guild Wars 2 for yourself. This year, you’ll finally be able to immerse yourself in the vast, diverse world of Tyria.
We recently finished our first closed beta test, and we’re now ready to hold progressively larger events. In February we’ll invite select press to participate in beta testing, and in March and April we’ll aggressively ramp up the size of our beta test events so that many of you will have a chance to participate. And of course, this all leads to the release of Guild Wars 2 later this year.
I’m very eager to finally get my hands, so to speak, on the game I’ve been reporting on for over a year both here and more recently on GuildMag (I haven’t been able to get to any of the shows where ArenaNet has had demo sessions running, so video clips on YouTube have been all I’ve seen).
Update, 24 January: A comment from ArenaNet Community Manager Martin Kerstein to clarify that it’s not an “open” beta as many of us were assuming:
We purposely didn’t use the term “Open Beta”, we mentioned Beta Events. To some people Open Beta means unlimited access to the game and everybody on the interwebs can play it. This is not what we will do.
We will do Beta Weekend Events. Those of you who played Guild Wars might already be familiar with the concept. It means that many of you (like the blogpost says) will get a chance to participate in specific Events, but access won’t be unlimited – there will be some kind of selection criteria and the beta period will usually start on a Friday and end on the following Sunday.
