September 5th UPDATE.

Eurogamer has posted details on how to sign up for the beta of Dark souls II.

"The first wave of Dark Souls 2 beta testing begins on 12th October, publisher Namco Bandai has announced.

A second round will begin on 27th October, meanwhile.

PlayStation 3 owners in Europe, North America and Australasia can sign up to the beta now by downloading a Dark Souls 2 closed beta ticket from the Sony Entertainment Network store.

Alternatively, head to the PlayStation Store on your PS3 and then the Latest Releases tab of the Games section.

Namco previously said the beta would reveal "an entirely new area of the game," suggesting that it won't be the demo playable for press at E3. "Holy-mother-of-god is it punishing," Eurogamer's Jeffrey Matulef reported at the time.

Dark Souls 2 isn't due to launch until March 2014, when it'll surface for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360."

Just click on the first link and redeem the ticket. Or Go on to the PSN Store on your PS3 and download the ticket there!.

You won’t get the standard download notification when completing this process. However, you can check that it has registered correctly via the XMB – Account Management > Transaction Management > Services List.

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Kotatsu are reporting that this fall Dark Souls II will be having a closed beta this fall

"If you're desperate for punishment this fall, you're in luck: the folks at Namco Bandai have just announced that a closed beta for Dark Souls II will launch in October for the PlayStation 3.

To access the beta, which begins October 5, you'll have to check the Dark Souls Facebook page over the next month or so. That itself is a form of punishment worthy of the Dark Souls name."

This is really interesting since i am pretty sure Demon souls and Dark souls did not have a beta. Maybe this beta will have a consensus to see if players are struggling or finding it easy at certain parts of the game.

Do you think this kind of ruins the mystery of Dark Souls II if people were to participate in a closed beta?

Very interesting. Count me in.

Probably not. It's just one area, and the Undead Parish was shown and made playable at events months before Dark Souls came out as well.

Via GameTrailers:

The depth of the Dark Souls II Closed-Beta experience will truly test players’ skill, intestinal fortitude, and their sheer will to survive. The Dark Souls II Closed-Beta will delve into one of the most treacherous areas of the Dark Souls II world; players will not only get an opportunity to explore an entirely new area of the game, but also experience overwhelming enemy encounters, diabolical challenges, and the unrelenting difficultly that only the developers at FromSoftware can deliver.

id assume it would be more to test out the online functionality of dark souls 2 since ds's online was fairly shoddy, and im pretty sure they dont give a crud if people have a tough time with the game haha. Im super bummed that i only have an xbox but hopefully enough people do this so that they can really fine tune those servers when the game actually comes out.

Nifty, hoping this goes on PS+ at some point. Presumably it's just the mirror knight area + pvp; and pvp is actually much more interesting if you're forced to use semi-shitty builds for it.

Ugh, Facebook, why?

@zeik: Since the beta is for EU/US they will probably just pick a random "follower" of their page to participate in the beta. I wish they let PS PLUS members in the beta at some point.

Can't wait to meet my demise again. It was a battle that was worth fighting for in the end.

The Beta Key is available already now on the PSN : go to the PSN store, you will find the beta key registration there to access for free. that's all there is for the moment...I guess the selected lucky bastard will have a confirmation email and an access to download the beta on PSN within days...

@announakis: Where?

I have added a link to the PSN store to redeem the ticket!.

Straight up telling me the page doesnt exist once I sign in. =\

Don't care about the beta, I want to go in fresh in march.

@demoskinos: I checked the facebook page and some people are having the same problem as you. It could be a server overload or a region problem. I managed to download the ticket so just keep trying.

Oh, now seeing this is almost two weeks old. Well.... then no wonder! Guess I'm not getting in then.

The sooner I get to tinker with the game mechanics the better.

Note that this only works in European countries. Might work with proxy.

Too bad it's for PS3 I disconnected and packed mine away the second I was done with The Last of Us.

also @jimmyfenix there is a spelling error in your original post.

Really? OMG no!!!!!!!

For anybody confused as to why the link in the OP doesn't work for them or why it doesn't seem like they're downloading anything: that link is for EU accounts. It's unknown if they'll post the link for the US store later in the day but your best bet is to look at the list of recently added items on your US store via the PS3 itself. It might simply have not updated yet, so sit tight. If you *really* can't wait, then you can always make an EU PSN account and do it that way. For those in the EU, as stated in the OP don't worry if it looks like nothing downloaded, just check your purchases and it should be there to show you registered.

See you all on the other side, hopefully.

@jimmyfenix: For me it says "You are not eligible to purchase or download this content." They also won't accept my new debit card since my old one expired a few days ago.

I know, I was flabbergasted myself.

Darkness3shadow@yahoo.com

Dark souls2

I'll just wait for the PC release.