On Friday, ArenaNet hosted a live stream showing off the new WvW map coming soon to Guild Wars 2.

Every Friday, ArenaNet hosts a live stream talking about some aspect of Guild Wars 2. This includes guides for different classes in many areas of the game, developer talks about designing content and giving sneak peeks at upcoming content. This week ArenaNet did the latter by showing off the new map coming to World vs World, Edge of the Mists.

If you missed the announcement interview we did with ArenaNet last month, Edge of the Mists is a new WvW map that will mix things up a bit. The biggest difference to the other maps is the ability for Edge of the Mists to create overflow versions of the map once it reaches the population cap. With an unlimited population due to overflows, players will be able to immediately join into the map at any time to play just on the map or use it as a way to play WvW while waiting for another map's queue.

Most of the live stream reiterated what we learned during the announcment. Towers, keeps and resource points will still be a big part of the new map, but the way each is captured and their setup will be changed. We knew that towers and keeps wouldn't have a generic lord to defeat and that they wouldn't have the same generic structure setup we see on the current WvW maps. Additionally the map will not add to a server's war score (the matchup total score) due to the advantage higher population servers would have by creating multiple overflows of the map, but players will still earn WXP and gain credit for achievements.

The live stream did, however, gave a first look at some of the unique changes from the default WvW. The three sides of the map have a set theme, desert, jungle or arctic, and each keep, tower and resource point has mobs that match the theme of the area. The jungle area has a lot of Grawl bosses and keep defenders while the arctic is filled with Kodan and the desert likewise filled with Ogres.

Some major differences include the lack of supply dolyaks and the inclusion of unique objectives. Dolyaks have been replaced with generators that players build with supply after capturing a resource point. These generators will then teleport supplies directly into the nearby (and allied) towers and keeps. Each thematic area has a keep, two towers and three unique objectives. These objectives will supply the owner with special benefits, but are still be worked on and will continue to be tweaked during the map's beta phase starting later in the month.

The map will go into beta sometime this month with a full release early next year. Participation in the beta is being selected from guilds that have signed up with this survey. There are no limitations for guilds wishing to sign up except that at least one member of non-English speaking guilds must be able to translate and submit the feedback for the guild in English. So your guild can sign up for the beta even if you are in a small guild or one that is looking to get back into GW2.

Matt "Mattsta" Adams

Follow me on Twitter @MattstaNinja