We’re pleased to announce the closed beta test for Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™. If you obtained a portal to the Heart of Maguuma during the special event in Dry Top and the Silverwastes, you’ll receive an e-mail with all the details you’ll need to get started. Please ensure that you’ve signed up for our newsletter so that we can contact you! We’ll be randomly choosing a number of newsletter recipients for participation in the beta test as well.

The upcoming closed beta will help us test the stability of our new PvE outpost-event content structure. Participants will be able to use a revenant—or any of the existing eight professions—to play a small amount of expansion story content, followed by two beta versions of outposts and their corresponding adventures in part of the Verdant Brink map. An early, partially completed version of the day/night cycle meta-event experience from Verdant Brink will also be available.

Testing will begin on May 26, and will run in 2 hour blocks with breaks between each block. The schedule is as follows:

11:30 a.m. Pacific Time (UTC-7) to 1:30 p.m. Pacific Time (UTC-7)

3:30 p.m. Pacific Time (UTC-7) to 5:30 p.m. Pacific Time (UTC-7)

7:30 p.m. Pacific Time (UTC-7) to 9:30 p.m. Pacific Time (UTC-7)

This test is not under a nondisclosure agreement, and participants are welcome to stream and discuss their experiences. We hope to see you there!