Last weekend we finally got a chance to take Guild Wars 2 for a spin and in turn talk about it! We love when near-to-release games drop the NDA because we finally are able to get our hands on the game and then discuss it with the community at large. Guild Wars 2 is not like any MMORPG released on the market. Sure you have fireballs, swords, and dragons, but the way you play the game is entirely different. You are no longer competing against other players for quest objectives. No longer are you strung out going from quest hub to quest hub doing a laundry list of inane things.

In Guild Wars 2, you are no longer playing a meta game of quests, you begin living in the world. Arenanet has created a game that moves. No matter where you are, the game could be doing something entirely different each time you visit the same place. With all that being said, let’s take a dive into what we loved about Guild Wars 2.

Finally Beta Weekend is almost here! We get a full update on what will be going on by Arenanet’s Dave Campbell

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!

There are a couple important things you need to know about this Beta Weekend Event:

• The only way to absolutely guarantee your access to this or any future Beta Weekend Events is to pre-purchase any edition of Guild Wars 2.
• Customers who have pre-purchased the game will receive an e-mail next week with instructions on how to download the client and participate in the Beta.
• This is a public event, which means that you’re not bound by a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). So go ahead, feel free to take screenshots, shoot video, blog, tweet, write, or compose a rock opera to share your Guild Wars 2 experience with the world.

The rest of the blogs gets you pumped up to explore the world and take part in PVP. What we do see is that ArenaNet is still not ready to beta test the Asura and Sylvari races as only the Human, Norn and Charr will be available to play. This may suggest that we’ll be seeing many more Beta Weekends before Guild Wars 2 will be released.

Today we got the news we’ve been waiting for. Arenanet has announced that the first public Beta Weekend, for those who have pre-purchased the game, will be in just 9 days from now during the weekend of the 27th. We’ve also learned that Guild Wars 2 will not have official forums yet, however they will have Beta Forums open specifically for this event only. Live Official Forums will come much closer to launch.

Arenanet will be publishing a blog with more details sometime soon.

To celebrate the successful press beta weekend for Guild Wars 2, the nice folks at ArenaNet gathered us all together in the main courtyard of Divinity’s Reach and killed us over and over again.

Just a warning, the video’s audio is a little rough.

Kotaku also has a full preview article titled, “10 Things I learned from Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend”

Combat in Guild Wars 2 retains the same simple elegance as the original game, a welcome in a genre that tends to lean towards complicated mechanics involving multiple rows of confusing icons. Here your weapons determine the first five abilities in your single toolbar and skills and traits determine the final five. There’s no need to rearrange your toolbar every time you switch weapon sets; those pre-defined skills populate automatically, leaving the player free to ponder which tools to use rather than how to use them.