The Rise of the Beta

So let me pause from the relentless promotion of Star Wars: Scourge to instead promote Guild Wars 2.

As you know, I talk about my day job rarely, and usually only when we've made a big announcement. Well, we are in the throes of our first Beta Weekend, which means that everyone who pre-purchased the game (either online or through particular shops) are being allowed in to sample our wares. And by sample I mean the three of the five races, all of the professions, and the first 30 levels. No small sample, that, but only for the weekend.

Of course, our own selfish reason for this magnificence is we really need to test out how the game works with MASSIVE numbers of MULTIPLAYERS. Test out not only the story flow and the server load but portals and the overflows and all manner of large technical details that may not be a problem if you're playing with only a few hundreds of people but suddenly loom large when huge hoards come streaming through the gates.

And we've had a lot of press in to play the game and show things off. And the results have been amazing. Here's a few of them (which feature me):

Eurogamer came to visit, took a lot of pictures of our new digs, and interviewed a slew of us. I tell my "Tibetian Temple on an Iceberg with Sails" story for what should be the last time (I have other examples - this is just the coolest one). The iceberg ship story also shows up in my talk with Becky at RPGamer.

Forbes (Forbes!) has a great interview with Mike O'Brien, our head honcho. I get a quotable in this follow-up.

I've been doing a lot of work with the Dungeon Team, and our own Will Fairfield gets a chance to show off the instanced adventures over on Gamespy. One cool thing about ArenaNet is that we have a very deep bench of competent people to talk about the game, and no fear about letting them talk about their favorite parts.

And then there's this:

This is what happens when you throw me into an interview cold. More later,