A lot of people had speculated that this weekend would see the second BWE, but ArenaNet told us earlier in the week that this would not be the case, citing needing to set up more hardware as one of the reasons. ArenaNet also shared some background on what goes into naming the Tyrian places and inhabitants.

The German fansite Gaming Insight posted a video interview they did with Matthew Moore and Stéphane Lo Presti during the EU Fanday. Meanwhile Venturebeat had a chat with Mike O’Brien about monetisation of Guild Wars 2.

Here at GWOnline we have added several people to the team, some of which you have seen posting already. A presentation of all the new faces is upcoming, but we will let everyone get a little settled in first.

This week we got another taste of Guild Wars 2 game play with the short stress test on Monday. Personally I mostly ran around headless chicken mode, reported a few bugs, kamikazeed on some trolls in a cave and got my behind handed to me in the Ascalon Dungeon (entering all alone at level 15 – not my most brilliant idea).

In other news this week ArenaNet shared the inspiring story of Kelly Wells, and gave some more details on how name reserving will work in Guild Wars 2. They also reached 500,000 likes on Facebook and thus released a new concept art.

Meanwhile rumours of the Guild Wars 2 release date are running wild, sometimes even in opposite directions at the same time. This week some advertisement printed with the release date June 28 date surfaced, while a Gamestop earnings call slotted the release for after July. As always though, if you do not hear it directly from ArenaNet or NCSoft, it is just that – rumours.

Meanwhile we here at GWOnline are busy expanding our team, so should be an exciting few weeks ahead. Oh, and Relics of Orr is back

The very first Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Event has come and gone, and it was a blast. Also, seeing so many people coming together to play with us in the GWOnline Alliance Guild was heartwarming. You guys are the best!

This marks a milestone not only for ArenaNet, but also for us as a community. Many thousands of fans have finally had an opportunity to play the game first hand for an extended period of time, and can actually share those experiences freely. And it shows in our community forums. Now people finally have something tangible to discuss!

It is also a milestone because the information of the game multiplied exponentially over the weekend. We at GWOnline have so far not chosen to have a separate Guild Wars 2 knowledge database here on the site, but rather to focus our efforts supporting the official Guild Wars 2 Wiki, figuring that we as a community should focus our efforts on the one knowledge base that will be available to everyone from within the game. That said, we will of course still offer more specialized information and analysis, guides and aggregations, and we are always open to suggestions from our community.

Regarding the BWE, most of us naturally spent as much time as we humanly could in game, so GWOnline’s coverage will be a bit slower out the door compared to the Press Beta Events. But we do got some great coverage coming up, so stay tuned! Personally I will be covering playing Guild Wars 2 on Linux in great detail (both literally and figuratively).

Oh, and we finally made our friendship with Necrobator and GuildWars2Hub official, with front page logos and all.

Finally, with the amount of bloggers, YouTubers, gaming media and podcasts covering Guild Wars 2 (yay!) it has now become too much to make a full list every week, especially the kind of list that I want to provide. I want the list to be ordered for maximum usefulness, screened for non-original content (try not to list pure reports) and with a clear layout, and this takes a lot of time.

I started out this week’s list and had to admit defeat. It was just way too much! So apologies to everyone waiting, there wont be one this week. I have been wanting to re-envision Guild Wars 2 Weekly for a while anyway (the time needed to make the list has grown every single week), and after this first BWE seems like the time to do it. So come back on Sunday for the new and improved Guild Wars 2 Weekly! 

ArenaNet finally announced the date of the first Beta Test Weekend – April 27-29! It had been known for some time that it would be some time during “end of April”, but many had speculated this weekend since the next one is also Guild Wars 1′s 7th birthday celebrations. Looks like next weekend will be a busy one! The Sylvari or Asura races will still not be available for play, but will get to visit Lion’s Arch for the very first time, which should be a real treat. For those eager to know more of the Sylvari, it might be interesting to know that the latest issue of Gameinformer does have an article about the Sylvari starting area and story (no online version atm, sorry). Meanwhile, ArenaNet is preparing the beta forums, and while they are very much a work-in-progress they are coming along.

In Guild Wars 1 there was the MS Toga party on Saturday April 21. A great initiative by GW-EN and Gamers Giving Back, among others, raising over $3,000! The event was also a blast to attend, and really shows what a great community we have.

In other news, we at GWOnline are busy preparing for the beta. We are also looking for more people to join the team! By the way, did you know that you can share all your favourite Guild Wars 2 videos at GWOnline TV? We got categories for pretty much everything, including Machinima, Professions, Press coverage and PvP. And you can make your own Guild Wars 2 blog right here at the site. Something to think about after next weekend

Oh, and we made friends with Black Star Radio and Italian fan site Ebohawke!

Guild Wars 2 pre-purchase has started! (some media reports: Gaming Target, Examiner, Digital Entertainment News, Destructoid, MarketWatch), and it will run until shortly before launch as permitted by server loads (Forum Discussion). And with it a predictable amount of chaos – Retailers sold out from day one, confusions about which retailers have which editions, payment issues, people being issued used codes and so on and so forth. Luckily it seems like most problems are being solved, even though there are still some clouds to scatter. Also on Friday there was a final server stress test (still under NDA, so if you participated, don’t tell anyone!) that of course was leaked and spawned some indignation among pre-purchasers that they were not invited. However, this was not a Beta Event, the first one of those will be in the end of April (no set date yet) according to ArenaNet.

The week also had two official blog posts detailing the making of of the Collector Edition (Rytlock figurine, Art book) and of course loads and loads of videos, podcasts and articles. And we made friends with Talk Tyria!

Finally, since the amount of Guild Wars 2-related content is now reaching critical amounts, I will from now on make a sorted list like before, but only comment on some of the highlights from the week. Follow after the jump and see how it works out!

The last quivering week before Guild Wars 2 pre-purchase finally starts, and the community is on edge. Which retailers will have the game for sale? What if retailers oversell their copies? What about currency? Region locks? The questions have been many, luckily we have gotten some answers as well. The game also got it’s official ESRB rating (“Teen”), driving the point home that it really is coming for real.

On Monday and Tuesday ArenaNet hosted an EU Fanday at it’s Brighton offices for fan sites and blogs who hadn’t previously been in the press beta events. The day was attended by several of our friends and from what we hear it was a blast!

The week also had an official blog post about Squads in WvW, an unusual number of ArenaNet interviews including a GWOnline exclusive(!) and of course loads and loads of videos, podcasts and articles. Oh, and we made friends with Nerdy Bookahs and Boons & Conditions! So without further ado, here we go!