I’m taking part in this weekend’s beta event with some notes posted in lieu of serious analysis over on GuildMag. Here is my initial report from yesterday’s activities.

My most recent weekly column at GuildMag is now online. With everyone eagerly awaiting the start of this weekend’s beta event, it may be my least-read column for months.

With the (literally) thousands of beta keys being distributed for next weekend’s Guild Wars 2 beta event, there will be lots of new players who haven’t been in the game before. The folks at Nerdy Bookahs have a good basic article posted to help beginners get started in the game.

This FAQ is mostly for those who have just recently heard of Guild Wars 2 and now want to know more. If you have been following the game for years or even just months, if you have pre-purchased the game and if you have already played it, you are welcome to read it as well, but you will find a lot of information that you already know.

Since the game is still in development a lot of things are subject to change (yes, believe it or not, ArenaNet is handling the Beta Weekend Events like a real beta and is still changing things around). Also, new information comes out every now and then which might outdate what you can read here. If you notice any of that — or just errors that I’ve made — please comment (with sources if possible).

My latest weekly column at GuildMag is now online. We’re all now waiting for next weekend’s beta event to start.

ArenaNet distributed some beta keys to several Guild Wars 2 fan sites, including GuildMag (where I’m a contributing writer). We decided to run a contest to decide who should get our allocation of beta keys. We wanted fans to complete the joke “An asura, sylvari and a charr walk into a bar…”

The surge in traffic briefly knocked us offline. The community managers at ArenaNet noticed:

My latest weekly column at GuildMag is now online. Some disappointed fans are expressing their anger over the announcement that the next Beta Weekend Event would not be this weekend. Some leaked information through Reddit, and the usual assortment of blog posts, videos and podcasts round out the bill of lading for this week.

My latest weekly column at GuildMag is now online. Over the past week we’ve seen lots of information from the stress test on Monday plus more articles and videos from April’s Beta Weekend Event. Now we just need to hear when the next Beta Weekend Event will be held.

My latest weekly column at GuildMag is now online. There are still lots of links to the April Beta Weekend Event, as folks sort through their video captures to create interesting YouTube posts. The next event will be on Monday, but it’s a stress test rather than a formal Beta event (it’ll last less than a day, and it’s on a workday to boot).

My most recent weekly column at GuildMag is now online. The vast majority of links are to Beta Weekend Event articles of praise, complaint, suggestion, and regret that it’s over. The next event has not been announced, although ArenaNet had planned to have them on an approximately monthly basis until formal launch.

(Cross-posted from GuildMag)

After posting yesterday’s report, I read this tweet from Hunter (of Hunter’s Insight) “You can tell someone went into GW2 with a negative attitude to begin with when they start a post with complaints. Confirmation bias.” That’s very true, and I hope I’ve managed to keep my commentary balanced. I don’t want to come across as a total fanboy over Guild Wars 2, so I’m pointing out issues and concerns, but don’t misundestand me: I really enjoyed my brief time in Tyria 250 years later. When Natural Sword and I teamed up again for the last few hours of the beta weekend event, it was amusing how often we’d use words like “epic” and “awesome” in discussing the most recent dynamic event chain. We’d both made it past level 20 but the content scaling seemed to be working quite well — it was challenging without being too deadly.

It was a beta event, but aside from the few bugs I mentioned in the earlier installments, and a few more I encountered on Sunday, the game felt very polished and immersive. After I finally got to bed this morning (3:00 a.m. local time), I found I was dreaming with the Guild Wars 2 UI overlaid (the dream wasn’t GW2-related, but I had to use the WASD keys to move and I kept pressing the F key to interact with people… I’m going to feel like I’m wading through mud when I get back into Guild Wars, as the character movement in Guild Wars 2 is so fluid it almost feels like you’re on ball bearings. I found I was frequently “over-correcting” my movements for the first few minutes in game.

I spent somewhere in the region of 30-32 hours this weekend playing (I forgot to check before the finale), and I would have played even more if I could have physically taken it. The only times I found my frame rate dropping badly was during the first few minutes in the starting area on Friday (with hundreds of other brand-new characters cluttering up the terrain), and the last hour on Monday morning, as the zerg formed and rolled through Wayfarer Foothills.

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(Cross-posted from GuildMag)

With my ranger pet being nerfed after level 7 (see yesterday’s post for details, including the comments), there didn’t seem to be much point carrying on any further with my ranger. I was dying regularly enough with an active pet … no point in spending the rest of the weekend practicing my “downed” skill set! (And many thanks to the noble souls who revived me a few times last night.)

After witnessing the land rush to certain servers on opening day of the beta weekend event, I now hope that ArenaNet can come up with some method of allowing long-established guilds to all start on the same server: as I mentioned yesterday, my guild only managed to get a small number in before the capacity of Sorrow’s Furnace was reached. For the BWE, it doesn’t really matter that much (except for WvW fans), but I think it’s a major concern for lots of players who want to enjoy the company of the guild/alliance they’re used to working with in Guild Wars. The transfer fee for switching worlds was waived for the first 24 hours of the BWE to help with this, but you still can’t transfer to a server that’s at or over capacity.

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(Cross-posted from GuildMag)

Like most of you, I hadn’t had the chance to play Guild Wars 2 until this weekend. It’s (already) been an enlightening experience. I started writing this on Friday evening, after about four hours of game play. Lots of things I’m encountering are probably more a reflection of my lack of knowledge about MMOs in general (I haven’t really played any other games than Guild Wars).

I’d managed to get my human ranger to level 6, unlock most of the basic weapon skills for axe, dagger, and shortbow. It’s been lots of fun so far, but the server my guild/alliance was hoping to all be on maxed out early, so anyone who tried getting in more than half-an-hour after the BWE started has had to go to a different server instead.

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My weekly column at GuildMag is now online. It’s wall-to-wall Beta Weekend Event anticipation, advice, and speculation. Everyone who pre-purchased Guild Wars 2 is able to take part in the beta event.

At about 3:00 this afternoon, I’ll be disappearing into the beta event (technical issues permitting) and won’t be back to normal blogging until Monday. I might be able to get a few posts up over the weekend, but I’m planning on total immersion into Guild Wars 2.

If you’re in the beta, the GuildMag North American staff will be playing on the “Sorrow’s Furnace” server. Plans apparently changed. GuildMag staffers will be playing in several servers in North America. As my guild and alliance are going to be on “Sorrow’s Furnace”, that’s were I’ll be.