Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns continues the storyline that has the game world of Tyria facing off against the Elder Dragon Mordremoth. As the storyline unfolded through the game’s Living World updates, players had speculated about one possible casualty in the war with Mordremoth. In one cliffhanger, Tyria’s iconic hero Rytlock disappeared into a mysterious void as he chased the weapon to end the curse of the Foefire and drive the ghosts of Ascalon away for good.

In Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, Rytlock not only makes a triumphant return from the mysterious Mists, he comes back with an all-new set of abilities. His return sets the stage for one of the expansion’s most exciting additions, the introduction of an all-new profession called the Revenant that channels powers from some of the Guild Wars universe’s most legendary heroes.

In addition to these features, ArenaNet showcased every key new feature the expansion brings to the core game, covering additions to both PvE and competitive PvP and World vs. World modes.  The trailer showcases each feature set, and set the stage for an ongoing series of updates now through launch that would delve much deeper into what each will bring to the expansion.

The beta weekend starts 12 p.m. PT today and runs until 11:59 p.m. PT on Sunday, September 6.

As a first for Guild Wars 2 betas, your progress is saved from your last test. That means you can pick up where you left off and also continue your journey with pursuing and earning abilities in the new Mastery system.  Among the new content we’re showing in this beta is exploration of an entirely new area in the Heart of Maguuma jungle - the jungle-floor biome.  You’ll be able to play as the new profession, the revenant, as well as try out all of the elite specializations for existing professions that we’ve announced so far.  For PvP players, Stronghold mode is also available in this test.

These beta weekend events are your opportunity to help shape the development process and the experience you’ll have when Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ is completed. These are real beta tests, and you have the real opportunity to make our expansion better with your feedback.

As a reminder, we’re not going to show everything in the expansion in beta weekends. We want to keep a strong sense of discovery and not spoil huge parts of the story ahead of time. We’re going to test enough to help us broadly understand how everything works and also apply those lessons to the parts of the game we won’t be showing during beta weekends. For example, we’ll only ever be showing the first story chapter and parts of the first map of the expansion during beta weekends to ensure that an entire world of discovery and excitement awaits you on launch day when you venture deeper into the jungle. After all, Guild Wars 2 is the game where the journey is the goal!

Players who have pre-purchased the expansion will see a new button appear on the character-creation screen that allows them to create and play a fully geared, level 80 beta character of any race for the duration of the weekend. You’ll have access to four beta character slots to use, and if you created characters in our first Beta Weekend Event, your progress—including any Mastery system progress you’ve earned for your account—will be available for you in the second event.

Players who have pre-purchased will be able to use their beta character slots to create our new profession, the revenant, using the full selection of core specializations, weapons (including underwater combat), and legends. You’ll also be able to play with our new elite specialization system that grows your character professions into new elite specializations. You’ll be able to try out the chronomancer, dragonhunter, reaper, and tempest, as well as the newly announced elite specializations: berserker, and herald, as well as the thief specialization we’ll announce later this week.

Beta characters will begin by playing through a brief, shared battle in the Silverwastes that leads into the expansion’s jungle region, followed by the introductory story step of the expansion. From there, they will land in Verdant Brink, the first map of the expansion. For our second beta weekend test, you’ll be landing in a different part of the map than the one we showed in our first beta weekend, and you’ll be able to explore a new area: the jungle-floor biome. The playable content will comprise about 25% of the expansion’s first map. Train your Masteries in the jungle region as you play through the story and event content available in Verdant Brink.

As you explore this area of the map, you’ll find survivors from a ship of nobles that traveled with the Pact Fleet to witness the battle with Mordremoth and got far more than they bargained for, including one particularly famous noble who has gone…wild. The quaggan Baroosh and his village, who potentially joined the Pact in your personal story, were also aboard an airship that went down with the fleet when Mordremoth tore it from the sky. The survivors can also be found working with an ordnance corps to muster together a counterassault on the jungle dragon. Across this area, numerous new enemies are there to face off against, including your first encounters with the aggressive hylek tribes Coztic and Xocotl.

Not only will you be able to take your characters to the jungle, but you can take them into the existing game world as well! Whether you want to play in Player vs. Player, World vs. World, or PvE, feel free to try out the new profession or elite specializations in Central Tyria with all your friends and guildies. To go along with this, we’ll have our map bonus reward system on for beta characters only to help players get a feel for how we’ll be helping keep the core game world relevant and rewarding with the release of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

We’ll also be turning on our new Stronghold PvP game mode for all players for the duration of the weekend, along with the new Mist Champion selection system. Players who pre-purchase Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns will have all the currently revealed Mist Champions automatically unlocked for them to use for the duration of the weekend.