According to Jaeho Lee the Chief Financial Officer, The Guild Wars 2 beta will begin in the second half of 2011.
The news broke during a conference call where Jaeho Lee also hinted that Guild Wars 2 full release will be in 2012, “Starting from year 2012, we believe substantial growth will be driven by new blockbuster titles like [Blade & Soul] and Guild Wars 2.”
“Also, Guild Wars 2 will go into beta testing stage in the second half of this year,” he added.
Arenanet has been very silent about release dates and with two character classes still unknown and two playable races still unseen for the most part this comes as a surprise to the followers of this game. After playing it at PAX East though you could tell that the game was very functional and allowed you to open miniscule features like inventory, crafting, player info, and other tabs that really had no purpose being in a demo.
Meaning obviously they have been on a good pace for completion and a beta will help with the kinks and also bring huge excitement for players and skeptics. I participated in various alpha/beta events before the release of Guild Wars 1 and it was always exciting.
