http://www.arena.net/blog/the-beta-weekend-event-is-coming

We’re counting the days until the first public Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Event, which begins on Friday, April 27, at noon PDT (GMT-8) and ends on Sunday, April 29, at 11:59 p.m. PDT (GMT-8). Hundreds of thousands of players from around the world will get their first taste of Guild Wars 2—and rest assured, we’ll be playing alongside them!

- Choices, Choices – You’ll create your own personalized charr, human, or norn character and pick from our eight powerful professions. Your choice of race is vital to your personal story, and it determines in which of the huge starting areas you begin as well. A noble human mesmer will have a radically different game experience than a charr engineer in the service of the Iron Legion. Fortunately, you can roll more than one character and sample each starting area for yourself!

- Worlds Collide – If you want your PvP on an epic scale, look no further than World vs. World, where three teams comprising hundreds of players wage open war across four vast maps. You’ll lay siege to castles, raid supply camps, build devastating weaponry, ambush your foes, and leap into truly massive PvP battles—all for the glory of the server. We’re warning you: WvW is so addictive that you may spend the entire Beta Weekend Event there!

- PvP For You and Me – After you’ve gotten your feet wet, put your newfound skills to the test in Guild Wars 2 PvP, where small teams battle for points on a variety of challenging, compact maps. We adjust the level of PvP combatants so that all players are on equal footing. If you’ve got a competitive streak or you like playing first-person shooters online, you owe it to yourself to try out Guild Wars 2 PvP!

- I Love L.A. – For the first time ever, we’re opening the metropolis of Lion’s Arch to beta players. Wander the streets of this cosmopolitan trade hub, chat with traders and travelers from every corner of Tyria, hop through one of the many asura gates to points beyond, or discover the famed diving platform at Diverse Ledges. Lion’s Arch is a city like no other!

@CharliePrince,

1) ArenaNet needs to apply overflow servers to their website

2) There are going to be a ton of overflow servers this weekend with the sheer number of people playing on each server

3) I love ArenaNet's humor

4) The blog post crashed in under a minute actually. It took them five minutes to tweet about it.

And yes... Martini will probably be drunk the entire weekend which will be followed by her complaining about her hangover on Monday

And yes... Martini will probably be drunk the entire weekend which will be followed by her complaining about her hangover on Monday

IT'S MY PARTY AND I'LL DRINK IF I WANT TO!!!!!! Mwahahaha

I even teased them about it and got a reply  the door was wide open so i walked right thru it

my reply to their "yes we know it's down" tweet

"@GuildWars2 just to join in with the millions of #GuildWars2 fans hitting your blog sight for a DDOS attack ..you know it's down right?"

they replied

@GuildWars2: @esmeraldoc Haha, yep. We're working on it! ~RB2 #GuildWars2

 

As sad as it is to not see the Sylvari and Asura being playable I can understand why:

- ArenaNet does not have to show them off till the public. They can hold them back till release. It keeps a large portion of the game off limits and you still have a large portion that will be fresh by release.

- They want to stress test and crash the servers. By concentrating everyone in the Human, Norn, and Charr areas which happen to be near each other they maximize the number of people in an area which in turn leads to stress on the server. It allows ArenaNet to tweak and optimize the game to run better with a vast number of people in an area.

- Sylvari and Asura would be overwhelming. There is simply far too much in the game to do without them added in. Between just the Human, Norn, and the Charr you have the following: all eight professions, 3 tutorials, 3 starting zones (1-15), 3 level 15-25 zones, Ascalon Catacombs dungeon (the level 30 one in both story and explorable mode), the personal stories and their various choices between 3 races and 8 professions, all structured PvP maps, the entire World vs World experience, crafting, underwater combat in six zones, and Lion's Arch (which is assumed to be in a level 25-35 zone).

Yeeehaaaw!!  This will be interesting! LOL  The servers shall quake with fear! 

Wow, LA.  It's going to look so awesome.  I may not go see it just to keep it a surprise for me when the game launches.  Very, very tempting though...

I give the servers (both normal and overflow) all of five minutes before they crash and burn and Asuran Engineers must be called in for emergency maintenance to bring them back on online.

Also... who the heck knew that Asurans knew coding...

I cannot believe someone took the time to make this 

for everyone who have problems with the Beta Start Time..

AND IT'S WORLDWIDE TOO!!  oh my god the party's gonna be wild! This totally hits home the fact that it's a worldwide event

Beta Event Start times - WorldWide

I knew it was gonna be this weekend.     I have PI at the store on Sunday.  Gonna have to come up with a reason to not come in on Saturday.  Hmmmm..   So I could at least play a little.