WARNING: You may want to take this with a grain of salt, as we are on the internet.

SomethingAwful poster Tivac, evidently ANet web developer Pat Cavit, has shared some minor details about game systems and the development psychology of the company. Most exciting is the the info on how closed and open betas will be arranged. You can find the salient points in this post on Reddit, as well as all of Tivac's posts in the thread here. If you want to browse the entire SA thread, follow this link. Cheers!

I think I saw this linked on r/gaming. I was surprised to hear that the CBT length was only ~2 weeks. Hopefully they don't need too many rounds. I'm not sure I learned too much that I didn't already know, but I shouldn't expect to given how much time I spend finding every bit I can find.

He mentions that they are in beta in the traditional sense, meaning content locked.

Hopefully not much longer!

Fuck. I really need a PC.

I'm hoping they do one of the beta weekends that's open to everyone like they did with the original Guild Wars, instead of a longer one that not everyone can get into.

What wouldn't I give to get in the beta :X

@Maystack said:

I'm hoping they do one of the beta weekends that's open to everyone like they did with the original Guild Wars, instead of a longer one that not everyone can get into.

They've mentioned before that they don't want to do an open beta, since most people play them will use it as nothing more than a demo to judge the game in an unfinished state. So instead there will be something similar to the preview weekends they did for the original GW, where anyone could play a week or so before release. This was a long time ago now though, so who knows what the current plans are.

Hopefully we see a release date soon, but I don't see it being before July-ish a this point.

Planning stages for the "Open Beta" is underway.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/view/news/read/23225/Guild-Wars-2-Open-Beta-In-the-Planning-Stage.html

Fantastic! I was planning on avoiding the open beta like the plague, wanting to go into the final product. I've since gotten less hyperbolic and would love to get in an roll something I've little interest in playing otherwise (Asura Guardian). In any case, open beta means one step closer to release, even if it's just the planning phase.

@Maystack said:

I'm hoping they do one of the beta weekends that's open to everyone like they did with the original Guild Wars, instead of a longer one that not everyone can get into.

They've mentioned before that they don't want to do an open beta, since most people play them will use it as nothing more than a demo to judge the game in an unfinished state. So instead there will be something similar to the preview weekends they did for the original GW, where anyone could play a week or so before release. This was a long time ago now though, so who knows what the current plans are.

Hopefully we see a release date soon, but I don't see it being before July-ish a this point.

@Seppli: Many people loved GW1 because it was so different from typical MMO's. GW2 isn't going to be instanced, which opens it up a lot more, but it's still actively trying not to just be an MMO. There's not going to be endless amounts of time sinks, grinding, raids, etc, which some people actually seem to enjoy.

As great as I think GW2 is going to be, I don't think it's going to be a game for everyone.