Join the Guild Wars 2 stress test on Monday

There's a Guild Wars 2 stress test coming up that pre-purchasers (people who've already paid up front for the game) can join in on. It's a little bit like a beta, but not to be confused with a full beta weekend event.

The stress test starts at 7pm on Monday, 14th May, and ends seven hours later at 2am. That's BST/UK time, so it works out well for us.

This being a stress test means ArenaNet is seeing what its servers are capable of. Expect some performance fluctuations as a result.

"This special test event is open only to pre-purchase customers who have registered their accounts. With your help, we can conduct important tests and address some of the issues we identified during our first beta weekend event," community manager Regina Buenaobra explained.

"During this event, all you need to do is play normally with a new or existing character on your beta account using the same game client. Please note that since this is a stress test of our servers, you may experience some in-game performance issues.

"If you've pre-purchased Guild Wars 2 and wish to participate in the stress test, we recommend that you register the account and download the game client."

An open-to-pre-purchasers Guild Wars 2 beta weekend has just passed, which Eurogamer wrote a preview about.

Eurogamer also jetted off to Seattle recently, to the home of developer ArenaNet. We wanted to find out more about the company and the people making Guild Wars 2.

We don't have any captured Guild Wars 2 gameplay, but PC Gamer recorded a great video of a run through a level 30 Story Mode dungeon with some of the game's developers.