Get ready for Guild Wars 2 in SA

The highly-anticipated Guild Wars 2 MMO is ready to rock PCs on 28 August 2012, and a number of community-oriented websites have already popped up in anticipation.

We caught up with one such South African Guild Wars 2 community website – Guild Wars 2 SA – to find out more about what they are up to ahead of the game’s launch, and what members can expect with the game coming out in a week’s time. The site launched in February 2012 and currently has a 300+ membership.

Deidre Zeuner (Zeu) is the owner of Guild Wars 2 SA, who explained that it is fan site dedicated to providing a communal meeting place for the members, up to date coverage on anything Guild Wars 2 related (including news, media, community updates, blogs, guides, events, and tournaments).

“In addition, it is our goal to create a central alliance platform for all our affiliated guilds, bringing friends and communities together with teamwork and loads of fun,” said Zeuner.

“Our admin team is based on, and lead by, a group of outstanding community volunteers who have committed themselves to ensuring our forums remain updated, clean, and friendly at all times. Their bios can be read on the Guild Wars 2 SA website.”

We asked if the site has any affiliation or recognition from NCSoft, publisher of Guild Wars 2. ” We don’t have any official affiliation with NCsoft, but they have noticed our community efforts and have added us to the list of approved fan sites on Guild Wars 2 Wiki,” said Zeu.

Speaking to how the site sustains itself financially, Zeu said “Guild Wars 2 South Africa is primarily supported out of pocket, but we’ve also received donations in the form of web development and in-game items for our launch competitions.”

“We have built up a very good relationship with NCSoft, who noticed our efforts and graciously gave us 170 beta keys at the previous Beta Weekend. More recently; NCSoft donated one Collectors’ edition and 2 standard editions for our Guild Wars 2 Launch competition,” said Zeu.

Guild Wars 2 SA provides the following to its community:

A warm welcome, as well as a professional quality site with loads of information;
A Mumble server for those guilds not currently in a position to obtain their own mumble/teamspeak server;
Guild registrations and membership applications directly on their website;
Regular community events to unite the various South African Guilds and their respective players;
Regular articles;
Forums.

Future plans include live-streaming of Guild Wars2 at community events.

For more information on the Guild Wars 2 SA launch competitions, head on over to the MyGaming competition forum.