I should have known they'd do this.

I should have known that when Arena announced their World Preview Event would start this Friday that they'd actually start it on Thursday.

For those of you who participated in the E3 for Everyone event, you'll remember that Arena opened the gameworld early. It's hard to complain about a game company giving you more time to play the game for free, but I was hoping to tend to some real life things tonight in preparation for the event this weekend. However, the siren's song of Guild Wars called me to my computer and I spent several hours in Arena's virtual world.

When I logged in, I was surprised to see all my old characters from the May event still there. The problem was they all looked the same - like three clones of Lex Luthor - and were unplayable. No big deal. I wiped them and started from scratch. The creation process allows you some, though not a lot, of freedom in determining the look of your avatar. Most of it depends on your primary class. I chose a Warrior/Monk and headed, once more, unto the breach.

I started in a pre-scripted solo area. Now, this is an event and the real game will, undoubtedly, play differently, but this first area served as a nice warm-up - sort of Guild Wars' version of the newbie island. I was given a refresher on weapons, attacking, spells, and other things as I made my way to the Lion's Gate. There, I picked up some companions for the mission. Arena has added a great feature here. The mission is not a solo mission, so NPC henchmen are available to round out your group. You can make your group of any mix of players and henchmen. This keeps you from having to wait until you can get a full group of players.

The first mission was a quest to head to the Temple of Tolerance and protect Confessor Dorian from the undead horde, then find a scepter and return it. This is not a hard mission, but it helps to get you assimilated to Guild Wars. After completion, I was inducted into the White Mantle and then got the opportunity to head into the second mission.

Instead, I opted to go to one the tournament area. This was my favorite area from my previous experience with Guild Wars and it was still a lot of fun. But it was a bit confusing this time around, as it appeared that more than two teams were in the arena. I may be mistaken on that, but I know there were a blue, a yellow and a green team. I couldn't distinguish the two opposing teams from each other, so even though I killed the blue team's priest, I still ended up getting overrun from the yellow team (I think). I wish it had been a bit clearer as to whom I was fighting, but it's probably just me not paying attention.

I had to end it there. So far so good. Lag is noticeable, but not a terrible problem, and updates are constantly being streamed to my client. I had to log off twice to allow the new client to take effect, but that's to be expected in an event like this. Tomorrow I'll get a chance to really dig in. I hope to see more of you there. If you're playing and you want to give me a tell, I'm under the alias of Koltrane Curtisian.

I hope to see you all there this weekend!