To those still wondering, from Twitter:

"Those of you looking forward to headstart, it will begin on August 25 at 00:00 PACIFIC Time. ~RB2"

00:00 is midnight. That will be 9am central Europe time. So we Europeans can sleep while Americans have to stay up half the night at least... =P

And yeah, their timer IS bugged :)

Thanks Korrigan, thats a relief. Americans still get a headstart in time, but its minimal since its night-time (i know a lot of people maybe will play just because they are too eager to finally do it and forget sleep, but i am, however anxious and eager to play GW2, not willing to skip sleeping for it).

<3 ArenaNet

I am working that night...figures. oh well I will come home at 6am and make my characters and head off to bed.

Wow, that gives me an overall of 24 hours to play through dark souls before gw2 is released. Anyone think it is possible?

Thank you for the news!

Midnight pacific, means 3am for me (Eastern). All that means is bed at 8pm the 24, full night sleep to get up at 3am, and still start the 48 hour weekend marathon fresh :P

I think the countdown is Borked. 

It shows 12.00 midday on 25 Aug for me, and I am in the UK on BST

I think it works it out based on your system clock.

Edit: Confirmed. Change the time on your system clock and the countdown changes too. The clock is counting down BASED ON THE TIME ON YOUR COMPUTER

Now we just need to work out whether it is counting down to the actual time headstart starts, or just counting down to 12.00 midday....... and if they mean 00.00 PST, or PDT.....urrgghh Anet need to fix this, its making my head hurt

I did edit the original post to cover the new Twitter update from A.Net directly.

So the next question is...... if i set my system clock forward 23 days and whatever hours, does that mean the game will release sooner??? LOL

02:00 A.M. Central time...gods.

Looks like I'll be making my characters and going to bed. I'd rather get a full days play on Saturday.  2am Central is a little late for me.

Other!

They seem to be giving us a full 72 hours, which is good. However, I don't care that they are located in the Pacific Time Zone, they aren't the center of the Player Base universe. I'm going to guess that 90% of players are going to be in US or EU time zones and Pacific Time is at the tail end of that time zone range.

Midnight Eastern Time (US) would have made much more sense for the HS and release date start times. That's 9pm to 1AM for North America, not too late for the eastern coast to participate. 5AM to 2PM for most of Europe, which isn't too early.

Midnight Pacific puts the eastern most North American start times at 2AM to 4AM, which is horrible, even for night owls and early risers.

They really don't seem to have any "big picture thinkers" determining their scheduled times.

I personally can work with the time with out issues, but I know it's going to be a huge issue for most people in the US East of the Mississippi River, all the way to far Eastern Canada!

Besides, Midnight EDT also allows for midnight store openings on release day, if any retailers wanted to do so. Can't happen with anywhere in the US, except for PDT, Alaska and Hawaii with a Midnight PDT timer.

Originally posted by fiontar

Other!

They seem to be giving us a full 72 hours, which is good. However, I don't care that they are located in the Pacific Time Zone, they aren't the center of the Player Base universe. I'm going to guess that 90% of players are going to be in US or EU time zones and Pacific Time is at the tail end of that time zone range.

Midnight Eastern Time (US) would have made much more sense for the HS and release date start times. That's 9pm to 1AM for North America, not too late for the eastern coast to participate. 5AM to 2PM for most of Europe, which isn't too early.

Midnight Pacific puts the eastern most North American start times at 2AM to 4AM, which is horrible, even for night owls and early risers.

They really don't seem to have any "big picture thinkers" determining their scheduled times.

I personally can work with the time with out issues, but I know it's going to be a huge issue for most people in the US East of the Mississippi River, all the way to far Eastern Canada!

Besides, Midnight EDT also allows for midnight store openings on release day, if any retailers wanted to do so. Can't happen with anywhere in the US, except for PDT, Alaska and Hawaii with a Midnight PDT timer.

Excuse you for thinking that you're the center of the Universe.  I for one am GLAD that finally some company uses OUR time zone as a launcher instead of East Coast.  Every other MMO or whatever does it by timezone-specific (so Eastern gets a 3hr Headstart).  Only few have done universal launch with midnight Eastern, which is 9pm my time...not bad bonus, but eh.

Originally posted by fiontar

Other!

They seem to be giving us a full 72 hours, which is good. However, I don't care that they are located in the Pacific Time Zone, they aren't the center of the Player Base universe. I'm going to guess that 90% of players are going to be in US or EU time zones and Pacific Time is at the tail end of that time zone range.

Midnight Eastern Time (US) would have made much more sense for the HS and release date start times. That's 9pm to 1AM for North America, not too late for the eastern coast to participate. 5AM to 2PM for most of Europe, which isn't too early.

Midnight Pacific puts the eastern most North American start times at 2AM to 4AM, which is horrible, even for night owls and early risers.

They really don't seem to have any "big picture thinkers" determining their scheduled times.

I personally can work with the time with out issues, but I know it's going to be a huge issue for most people in the US East of the Mississippi River, all the way to far Eastern Canada!

Besides, Midnight EDT also allows for midnight store openings on release day, if any retailers wanted to do so. Can't happen with anywhere in the US, except for PDT, Alaska and Hawaii with a Midnight PDT timer.

Dude, at least you get to play since midnight on the 25th... Some of us have to wait until 5pm of the 25th... 

Originally posted by fiontar

Other!

They seem to be giving us a full 72 hours, which is good. However, I don't care that they are located in the Pacific Time Zone, they aren't the center of the Player Base universe. I'm going to guess that 90% of players are going to be in US or EU time zones and Pacific Time is at the tail end of that time zone range.

Midnight Eastern Time (US) would have made much more sense for the HS and release date start times. That's 9pm to 1AM for North America, not too late for the eastern coast to participate. 5AM to 2PM for most of Europe, which isn't too early.

Midnight Pacific puts the eastern most North American start times at 2AM to 4AM, which is horrible, even for night owls and early risers.

They really don't seem to have any "big picture thinkers" determining their scheduled times.

I personally can work with the time with out issues, but I know it's going to be a huge issue for most people in the US East of the Mississippi River, all the way to far Eastern Canada!

Besides, Midnight EDT also allows for midnight store openings on release day, if any retailers wanted to do so. Can't happen with anywhere in the US, except for PDT, Alaska and Hawaii with a Midnight PDT timer.

For me it's a huge improvement over many other MMO companies that even have their weekly maintenance often extended into our peak gaming hours here in EU because they all seem to think that PST zone is the center of the universe and rule us euros out of giveaways / contests and even GM run in-game events. That affects us weekly so in some way I enjoy that this time around it's inconvenient for the PST zone folk for 1x only. If you want to be there at launch time adjust your sleeping schedule, it's weekend after all. If that's too much for you then just join in later after your normal sleeping hours, probably less queue time and better performance by then too. 

And you're saying 4AM is horrible for NA folks but 5AM for EU isn't too early?

Well, it's morning for Europe and I have to work. Or I get a day off... 0:)

Oh, just never mind.  Sound and Fury, signifying nothing.