Guild Wars 2 End of Dragons testers can play with the Vindicator, Bladesworn, Catalyst, and DX11 update now

Hear that hum? It’s the distant rumbling of the hype train to Cantha, and it’s getting a little bit closer with this week’s Guild Wars 2 End of Dragons beta event. As of this afternoon and running through September 25th, Guild Wars 2 players – yes, even freemium players – can log in and roll up a temporary Vindicator, Bladesworn, or Catalyst to test out, though do note that you can’t share everything with your real toons and won’t be saved after the event.

“The second playable beta for Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons arrives today with three new elite specializations, which enhance gameplay and provide new ways to experience character professions. Logging in to Guild Wars 2 will grant players the ability to create up to three new characters automatically powered to the level 80 cap, with the ability to choose the new Bladesworn, Vindicator and Catalyst elite specializations for the Warrior, Revenant and Elementalist professions. The beta will run through September 25 and be available to everyone, including play-for-free accounts.”

The DirectX11 beta also kicks off today; players will need to opt-in in the options panel in-game and then restart to check out the expected graphical and performance improvements.

Also worth noting is that the next free episode in the living world seasonal repromotion is live today for the claiming, along with its new achievements; that’d be season four’s All or Nothing episode.

Starting Friday, players will also be testing out the WvW world restructuring via yet another beta, followed by two more beta events in October and November.