Here I am taking a look at the third and final beta event. I am discussing the new sylvari and asura races as well as if the game will be ready for launch.

I started the beta event with a sylvari character and during character creation I noticed a few things. First, the number of hair and face styles for the sylvari and asura are a bit lacking. The sylvari offer a number of different skin colors that you can choose from including a white/silver, bluish, purplish, as well as many shades of green which allows for pretty diverse character options. The asura skin tones on the other hand are almost stuck to some shade of gray which makes them one of the least varied since they also have so few face and hair options. To make your asuran character unique you can use different ear styles and other attributes to change your character up.

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Today they released a simple guide to get some points for those of you that have not played Guild Wars or did not add anything to the Hall of Monuments. For those of you that already have many points in the hall of monuments, they released footage of some of the items for the first time.

The deadline for Guild Wars character name reservation is July 31. Make sure you log into your Guild Wars account before then to make sure you can use the names in Guild Wars 2.

If you’re a Guild Wars player who wants to use your character names in Guild Wars 2, now is the time to stake your claim. It’s easy—all you have to do is log in to your Guild Wars account to reserve all your character names. But don’t delay—the deadline for name reservation is July 31.

We’re building our Guild Wars 2 name reservation list on July 31. We’re only reserving character names from active Guild Wars accounts, which is why you’ll need to log in at least once in 2012 before we build the list in order to be considered an active Guild Wars player.

However, as we mentioned in a previous blog post, your Guild Wars character names will not be reserved indefinitely. You must create a Guild Wars 2 character with the same name as your Guild Wars character during the Headstart Access period or on launch day. Shortly after launch, we’ll free up all the unclaimed names for new Guild Wars 2 players to use.

Don’t wait! Log in to your original Guild Wars account and reserve your character names today!

Guild Wars 2 will be running a third and final Beta Weekend Event planned for July 20-22. The have announced that both Asura and Sylvari will be playable races in the final beta.

For asura players, this means beginning your tale in Metrica Province, a vivid, exotic jungle area full of high-tech laboratories, quirky golems, and competing krewes of mad scientists. Nearby, the massive monoliths of the asuran capital Rata Sum hum with technomagical power. These diminutive geniuses may seem cute at first glance, but never underestimate an asura…

Sylvari players begin their story in the Grove, a luminous living city nestled in the shade of the Pale Tree, the “mother” of every member of this young race of plant humanoids. The sylvari are an enigmatic race of chivalrous explorers who are driven by an insatiable curiosity and guided by a collective Dream.

In addition they are adding a new map, Brisban Wildlands, which is a remote jungle adjacent to the lands of the asura, sylvari, and humans.
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