The wait is OVER! New Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend!

As stated earlier today by Chris Whiteside, lead producer of Guild Wars 2, the new BWE has a date and time:

Beta Weekend Event 2 will begin on Friday, June 8^th, at noon PDT (GMT-7) and will run until Sunday, June 10^th, at 11:59 p.m. PDT (GMT-7).

A little information about this new Beta Weekend Event:

• The characters created in previous Beta events have not been deleted.
• Introduction of Ascalonian Catacombs dungeon for characters level 35 and above.

Fixes and aditions from previous BWE (27th-29th April 2012)

Art/Animation Updates:

• Legendary weapon replacement skill effects
• Gadget on gadget flux
• Point lights are now enabled on equipped items
• Added support for replacement material effects
• Support material replacement file effect fading
• Added the "Sylvari glow"
• There is a new indefinite progress bar that uses the wipe shader
• Added Mystic Forge sparklies
• Mystic Forge fire spirals in one direction
• Rewards now "fly" into the Mystic Forge

Chat updates:

• Local chat (Say) is now very short range. /Shout (/Map) at map range has been added.
• Team chatting is prevented in all non-WvW and non-PvP maps
• Team chat is now game-server based
• Player scene and chatter lines are not shown as bubbles
• Support for map-wide chat (/shout, /yell, /y) has been hooked up
• /say and /local are now radius and reporting based instead of event based (current radius is 2000)

Game play changes:

• Iconics have 1% of the normal hate
• F11 should now open the options menu
• If a player goes from alive to dead, we now give them a waypoint to port to so they can resurrect
• Input binding:
• There are now distinct left and right shift keys
• Map complete rewards are now available
• If a transformation isn't allowed to interact with bundles, drop any bundles the character may be holding when transformed.
• Map complete doesn't trigger every time you zone into a map now
• Gadgets/turrets now have a concept of an "authority"
• The player that creates the gadget is assigned as that gadget's authority
• This basically means that players that place down the Siege blueprints can kick out other players who are in their siege weapons if they want to use them
• "Move to Target" split into underwater and terrestrial
• "Move to Target" no longer applicable when downed
• Only 5 unique combatants can combo with a given combo field
• Characters that aren't alive don't return legendary weapon ItemDefs
• Mystic Forge only takes one of each kind of item
• Trait tiers are in
• Added account bound items
• Players can no longer redirect to a map if they are already redirecting
• Added a skill point currency type
• A shard selection bug has been fixed
• Input bindings have been implemented
• Improved how "Fear" works
• Recharge slows should be slowing for the proper amount now
• Spawn scaling for low-level events has been adjusted
• Level 70+ rare items have the potential to salvage out more materials as deemed by special reward tables
• Auto-attacks no longer continue to attack an unselected target
• Missiles now fire in the direction of the camera when the player has no target and is holding down the right mouse button
• Players can now queue for multiple maps concurrently
• The default mouse scroll rate has been changed to 2x
• Mouse-looking no longer drives a characters movement unless they're executing an upper body skill
• Characters can no longer jump if the jump state doesn't exist
• The Fear mechanic has been improved
• Action Char Fear Char
• Action Skill Fear
• LFG:
• More backend implementation
• Blocked players no longer show up in LFG

PvP fixes:

• Added rank rewards to PvP Ranks
• Changed from a level to a level range per recent PvP Rank discussions
• PvpRank has been split from Glory
• Ranks now define a range of PvP ranks
• Placeholder awards are going through the reward manager
• Added support for Glory Boosts
• Start Auto Tournaments as soon as there are enough rosters ready (and send out a countdown when the match is about to start)
• Tournament server improvements
• PvP Lobby waypoint travel is free
• Added a new reward type for PvP rank up
• Players with an "Offline" status can now be invited to tournaments
• Players are unable to send tournament invites to themselves

WvW updates:

• Cannons now display red targeting circles to the enemy
• Game ending has been smoothed out
• Players receive a warning message and are redirected (configurable in content)
• The score dialog now displays a message telling the player their team's final position
• Gadgets now report their WvW team
• Gadgets can now insert their shard names into their name if they know their WvW team
• WvW travel is free
• Clicking "Go to WvW" will close the score dialog now (by design)
• Squad members may now speak into the squad channel
• Removed /.sq dev command
• Added /squadjoin and /squadleave client commands
• Commanders are now named "Commander "
• Players are no longer able to log back in to WvW maps
• Implemented /squadinfo and /supplyinfo
• Enemy pets and players are named with their shard name instead of team color
• Sectors can be marked up to have their shard name displayed
• Added "Go to WvW" button to the WvW score screen
• Commander markers no longer disappear after exiting a siege weapon
• Join WvW buttons use the correct world name for maps and actually take players to WvW on Alpha
• Left-clicking on a commander icon opens a context menu (with only one option at the moment)
• The chat user context menu has an option to join that player's squad
• Skill point challenges added
• Mystic Forge fixes:
• Polish
• Added click and drag of slotted materials
• Added flames!
• Added a quantity check for ingredients that require a certain item count before we request to forge a new item
• The Mystic Forge can take consumable subtypes
• Sparkly polish
• Now compares are weight class
• Now uses upgrade component types
• Added support for a "none" trinket type
• We hide the ingredient slots while animating then fade them back in when we display the reward dialog
• Fixed being able to match item subtypes correctly if set to "any"
• Ranger change:
• Pets can no longer be swapped out to instantly come back to life

Hint Update:

• Dialog now updates as hints are completed
• Category heights are now consistent
• Downed penalty hint
• Conditions
• Boons
• Equipment broken
• Waypoints
• Achievements
• Damaged equipment
• Upgrade components
• Crafting stations
• Resource nodes
• Stealing
• Fixed the attunement hint
• Change the Adrenaline and Life Force hints to require two uses to complete each hint
• Salvage kits
• Ranger pet bar
• Ranger pet controls
• Guardian virtues
• Mesmer shatters
• Engineer tool belt
• Meta events
• Renown rewards
• Ranger pet charm
• Pet panel
• Escape now cancels out of hints
• Added a "New" category to the hint dialog
• Added "NEW" indicators for recently completed hints
• Party invites
• Text now displays properly

As you can see, ArenaNet has been very busy to make sure they are delivering the best out of their new game.

For further info go to ArenaNet's Blog