Over the last two days, Guild Wars 2 Hub published a great two-part interview they had with Guild Wars 2′s Lead Content Designer, Colin Johanson. In it, he discusses some behind-the-scenes design details about the beta weekend events, renown events, the difficulty of the game, the impact of player feedback, the goals of the design team, and the atmosphere at the office. Good stuff!

Here’s one of the questions that was asked, with an answer that hits close to home for many MMO gamers:

Lewis B: Something that many people continued to say to me during the first Beta Weekend Event was that they couldn’t believe how polished the game was, that it could undoubtedly be launched tomorrow. Do you think this is a fair assertion? Where are you in terms of your overall timeline and assessment on the products level of “finish”?

Colin: First, let me say that we’ve seen that comment a lot, too, and it makes us, in particular our QA team, extremely proud of the hard work everyone has been doing. In an age where new-game releases have been ripe with bugs and unfinished products, one of our goals is to try to buck that trend and release a truly finished game that is as bug free as possible. We’re all gamers first at ArenaNet, and honestly we’re sick of paying for released games that aren’t ready to be released—it drives us nuts and we don’t want to do that to our fans. Quite frankly, we wouldn’t want to play our own game if it wasn’t ready for release either.

Make sure and check out Part 1 and Part 2 of the full interview!

Today we received news that we’ll be able to finally play as the asura and sylvari races in the next beta weekend event, which runs from July 20th to July 22nd. Along with the news, we also got a sneak peek at some screenshots and details about the lush landscapes these two races call home.

For asura players, this means beginning your tale in Metrica Province, a vivid, exotic jungle area full of high-tech laboratories, quirky golems, and competing krewes of mad scientists. Nearby, the massive monoliths of the asuran capital Rata Sum hum with technomagical power. These diminutive geniuses may seem cute at first glance, but never underestimate an asura…

Sylvari players begin their story in the Grove, a luminous living city nestled in the shade of the Pale Tree, the “mother” of every member of this young race of plant humanoids. The sylvari are an enigmatic race of chivalrous explorers who are driven by an insatiable curiosity and guided by a collective Dream.

The two starting areas sound amazing. Make sure and check out the full developer blog and the accompanying screenshots!

Oh, and if you’re curious about some in-game asura footage, check out this Gamespot video.

While the official Guild Wars 2 forums were still active after the second weekend beta event, there was a player-made topic asking for wish lists of features and fixes players most hoped to see before GW2 launches. The thread had some great ideas and suggestions for the developer team. Guild Wars 2 is looking very impressive even though it’s still in its beta stages, but there’s always room for improvement! In fact, many of these features are seen as almost necessary to some players.

We thought we’d post some of the ideas from that list and find out about other features and fixes the community would like to see implemented. Feel free to post your ideas in the comments section!

Today we get a new update from GW2′s Facebook page:

We know you are all very eager to begin the next Beta Weekend Event. Our community did an amazing job in the previous Beta Weekend Event and stress tests, providing our team with great feedback. Our goal has always been to do this right and treat the beta testing process as what it should be: a way to work out the bugs beforehand and give you the best game we possibly can at launch.

With that as our goal, the development team is working extremely hard to address your current feedback and prepare Guild Wars 2 for the next Beta Weekend Event. Once they’re finished, they’ll be ready for you to head back to Tyria for the next phase of testing.

We’re going to adhere to a monthly schedule as much as feedback and development allow, so it may be a little more or a little less each time, depending on how things progress. For now, we will have more information on upcoming Beta Weekend Events and stress tests as soon as we’re able, and we thank each of you for being an important part of the creation of Guild Wars 2. ~RB2

Since I am well-versed in dev speak, you can interpret this message as, “We’re not quite yet ready to have BWE2 yet.” Reading the tea-leaves, I would guess that the next beta weekend event is coming the first or second week of June. Arenanet hasn’t given us a set schedule yet other than once a month. Perhaps with “little more or a little less” than a month apart we might see two events in June.

I’m surprised the non-disclosure agreement was still in effect for this last weekend event. Let alone the threats of possible repercussions to anyone breaking NDA. A large portion of the game is on youtube already. Although I’d expect that future beta events will be more specific focus testing. Opposed to what seemed to be open game play with few restrictions in the media events. Now that we will not rely on the media sites for content release, expect big things to come from us here at GW2Junkies!