Guild Wars 2 kicks off 3-day headstart for pre-purchasers

One of the biggest releases this year is the massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG) Guild Wars 2. The game aims for a more dynamic combat system than what players are used to from the likes of World of Warcraft, Everquest or Star Wars: The Old Republic. For those who pre-purchased the game, the game’s three-day headstart has started today.

One of the biggest features of Guild Wars 2 is that unlike other major MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2 has no monthly subscription fee. The game follows a one-time payment model that you usually get from other games. Another great feature is the inclusion of a personal story for your character, where your character goes through a story which is moulded by the choices you make for the character during the creation of the character and other quests.

The Guild Wars 2 3-day head start has started

The game had been announced for a 2012 release earlier this year by the founder and president of ArenaNet, Mike O’Brien. At the time, he had said, “We recently finished our first closed beta test, and we’re now ready to hold progressively larger events. In February we’ll invite select press to participate in beta testing, and in March and April we’ll aggressively ramp up the size of our beta test events so that many of you will have a chance to participate. And of course, this all leads to the release of Guild Wars 2 later this year.”

Here are the system requirements for Guild Wars 2:

• Windows® XP Service Pack 2 or better
• Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3, AMD Athlon 64 X2 or better
• 2GB RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce 7800, ATI Radeon X1800, Intel HD 3000 or better (256MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)
• 25GB available HDD space
• Broadband Internet connection
• Keyboard and mouse

Guild Wars 2 is the biggest competition that the current king of the MMORPG world, World of Warcraft, will have to face. World of Warcraft is all set to get its latest expansion pack this year, titled Mists of Pandaria. The highly anticipated expansion pack is set to release on September 25. Once the expansion pack is out, players belonging to both the Alliance and the Horde will be able to visit and explore the long-lost continent of Pandaria and see the mysteries the continent hides.

CEO and co-founder of Blizzard Mike Morhaime said, “Mists of Pandaria contains the biggest variety of new content we’ve ever created for a World of Warcraft expansion, with features that will appeal to new players, veterans, and everyone in between. We’ve received a lot of great feedback from players during our most extensive beta test yet, and we hope they enjoy exploring everything Pandaria has to offer when the expansion comes out in September.”