Guild Wars 2 Launches August 25 With Early Access

It has become a tradition in online gaming, that pre-order customers are given early access to the official launch of a new game. The ritual will be continue, when the year’s most anticipated MMORPG, Guild Wars 2, begins early access on August 25, 2012.

Perhaps no game, other than the now struggling Star Wars: The Old Republic, has generated as much anticipation and publicity as Guild Wars 2. There is a week to go before pre-order customers begin to receive their launch invitations in their Email, and for many, the hours and days seem more like weeks and months. Everyone is excited, and we can’t wait to create our first character to battle across the high fantasy world of Tyria.

What is most remarkable about the launch of Guild Wars 2 is that the game has seen a great deal of its pre-launch buzz generated by word of mouth, and by the glowing praise of those who played the original Guild Wars. Developer Arenanet hasn’t been totally silent, but they haven’t released the massive flood of information that we have seen from many other games.

The team working on the game is fond of referring people to the official game blog, when asked probing questions, and there have been very few official announcements, since the last beta ended on July 22, 2012. Perhaps gamers should be happy, because this means they are still working hard on perfecting Guild Wars 2, instead of answering endless, annoying questions from gaming reporters.

There were some tidbits of information released at Gamescom 2012, which we are glad to share with you:

Choice of Worlds:

“At launch, players will be able to transfer between worlds freely. However, once server populations have largely settled and stabilized, world transfers will be restricted to once a week and cost a variable amount of gems based on the population of the world being transferred to.”

“In time, we’ll also introduce free “guesting,” which will allow players to visit other worlds as guests as long as they have friends on those worlds. This feature will be free, but guest players will not be able to enter World vs. World, and the Power of the Mists bonuses from their home world will continue to apply to their characters.”

Choice Of Language:

“We’re making it easy to switch between any of our supported languages (English, French, German, and Spanish).”

“When you install Guild Wars 2, the client matches the language your operating system is set to. If you wish to play in a different language after installation, you can change languages in the Guild Wars 2 launcher and the corresponding audio language files will be downloaded and installed. Changing the language of the in-game text is also available to you at any time by going to the in-game options menu.”

Purchasing And Playing Guild Wars 2:

There will be 3 major regional designations for the release of Guild Wars 2:

1.) Europe: Defined as Western Europe and Eastern Europe. Players in these regions connect to the European datacenter.

2.) North America: Defined as Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Players in these regions connect to the North American datacenter.

3.) Other: All countries not already listed above will connect to the North American datacenter.

That wraps up our latest update on Guild Wars 2, but its only a week until early access. Only a week. Only a week. I know, but really, its only a week.

Oh yes; we will leave you with a great quote by Guild Wars 2 Lead Producer, Chris Whiteside, from an interview with, of all people, Forbes Magazine. It sums up a bit about the pressure and concerns everyone at Arenanet must be feeling, and it certainly emphasizes their connection with the people who play their games:

Forbes: “What’s it like to finally have a release date in sight?”

Chris Whiteside: “Scary. The thing is there’s no arrogance here. One of the great things about relying on your community is that it’s less about Metacritic and that kind of industry pressure, and it’s more about the good pressure that’s put on us by our community. We don’t want to let the community down. It’s like we’re super excited about what we’re doing. We haven’t tried to over hype the game in any way. People have an opinion of the game and that’s fantastic. We just want to make sure that we exceed those expectations, and that we really put something special into the hands of the community and the people who are going to play the game. That continued support will allow us to sustain equally high, or even higher, quality moving forward. We’re nervous, but in a good way, about the launch. And we can’t wait to play with everyone once the gates open and the world is born, essentially, into digital space.”

And with that, what else can we say? We will see you there on Saturday, August 25, 2012, when we join the massive crowd of excited gamers in the online universe of Guild Wars 2. We are counting the minutes, just like everyone else. Unless, of course, we come across something exciting and important about Guild Wars 2, before the servers go live. So keep an eye on the Inquisitr.com gaming section, and be sure to be here Saturday, August 25, when we give our first in-depth report on the launch of Guild Wars 2.