Guild Wars World Preview Event

Today ArenaNet launched the next Guild Wars World Preview Event that can be enjoyed by everyone until November 1st. Starting early like the E3 for Everyone event before it, all prospective players should go and download the client. Other options are to visit one of these gaming centres near you, or pre-order the game. Pre-ordering has become a kind of epidemic as n0wak angrily points out, and appears to be the only way you can get major releases at specialty retailers the day it hits the shelf. That aside, ArenaNet has included some juicy sounding bait in the pre-order pacakge: portions of the soundtrack by Jeremy Soule, artwork from the game, and most importantly a spot in what they are calling "Beta Weekend Events". ArenaNet describes these weekend events as a way for pre-purchasers to try out the game right up until release. It doesn't sound like an outright closed beta, but you do get two keys to share as you see fit so you don't have to be alone in the playtest.

Overall I was greatly impressed with the shape of Guild Wars earlier this year, and look forward to this weekend's playtest and purchasing the full version in February. Because of the free service and its focus on combat and character tweaking, I'm curious to see how many players turn to Guild Wars after growing weary of paying $15 for Blizzard's massively multiplayer levelling simulator.

so we burned all our uniforms