Heroes of Tyria!
My name is Chris Whiteside, and I’m the lead producer of Guild Wars 2. Normally, I’m head-down in the trenches, making sure we’re producing the best MMO possible, but I wanted to come up for air and share some exciting news with you:
Beta Weekend Event 2 will begin on Friday, June 8th, at noon PDT (GMT-7) and will run until Sunday, June 10th, at 11:59 p.m. PDT (GMT-7).
If that isn’t enough to get you all bursting with excitement, here is some more news:
Your existing beta characters have not been deleted, and you will be able to continue right where you left off! This means that enterprising players with characters level 35 or higher will be able to test their mettle against the explorable version of the Ascalonian Catacombs dungeon!
In addition to sharing this news with you, I want to convey a massive “thank you” to all of you for playing in our beta events so far. The participation and enthusiasm we’ve seen has exceeded our expectations, and we’re all very grateful and appreciative here at the studio. Your support during our first Beta Weekend Event and throughout development has been instrumental in getting us prepared for launch and helping us take massive steps in the evolution of Guild Wars 2 as a whole. You, our community, are an integral part of the development process, and Guild Wars 2 simply would not be what it is today without you.
Your participation is even more important when you consider that we take our beta events very seriously in terms of our development strategy. At ArenaNet, “beta event” means exactly that—it’s a development-centric event in which we test our systems, discover new and exciting bugs, and get pivotal feedback from our testers about what is going in the right direction and what isn’t.
We have listened intently to all of your feedback from our first Beta Weekend Event, and we’ve made great strides toward resolving many of the issues you’ve helped us identify. These include party movement into overflow servers, chat functionality, key bindings, server stability, performance, and many more that we will detail in the near future.
Of course, there’s no denying the benefits of having such a vocal, outspoken community. And I’m not speaking just in terms of development; I’m also referring to how our players are spreading the word that Guild Wars 2 is more than just a game, it’s an evolving, online world that is shaped and driven by its players. Our community and our studio won’t accept anything less than excellence, and above all else, we both value a pioneering approach to the future of online worlds.
Having said all that, what is the one thing we most look forward to in our second Beta Weekend Event? In a nutshell, it’s getting the chance to play with you all: sharing a world we’ve built together, discovering what’s great and what could be better, and defining a ground-breaking world that we can all enjoy for many years to come. That’s what these beta events mean to us.
For those who haven’t yet pre-purchased Guild Wars 2, you’ll still have a chance to play in the beta. We’re teaming up with our partners to give away keys for Beta Weekend Event 2, so follow us on Twitter and Facebook to get the latest news.
Thank you all so much for your support, care, and enthusiasm—we couldn’t do it without you!
See you in-game,
Chris Whiteside
(a.k.a. Snowcrash)
