Guild Wars 2 public beta weekend dated

Guild Wars 2 is having its first public beta weekend, starting on Friday, 27 April at 21.00 (SAST) and ending on Monday, 30 April at 09.00 (SAST).

Of course, there’s a catch if you want to participate. You need to have pre-purchased any edition of Guild Wars 2, and redeem the pre-purchase code sent via the Guild Wars 2 registration page.

This will grant access to public beta testing periods and head-start access to the game when it finally launches. There is currently no firm release date for Guild Wars 2, as beta testing will help get the title polished up for launch.

It is unclear whether previous closed beta participants will be invited back, or whether there is any hope for non pre-puchasers to get into the public beta.

Word is coming in from various forums around the web that ArenaNet is having a bit of trouble integrating NCSoft master accounts with new Guild Wars 2 registrants. The issue is preventing access to the beta forums and also leaves registrants with no way to change their registration e-mail address. Hopefully this will all be sorted out in time for the first public beta weekend.

Open beta participants will be able to create a Charr, Human, or Norn character and pick from eight professions.

World vs World will be operational, with 3 teams of hundreds of players battling it out across four large maps. Small scale Player vs Player will also be live.

While not all areas of the game will be open in this upcoming weekend, ArenaNet promises that there will be more content than can be explored in a 60-hour window.

More information can be found over on the ArenaNet blog, linked in the source below.