Guild Wars 2's Gendarran Fields has centaurs, pirates, zombies, and filthy lying apple vendors

In Guild Wars 2's next beta weekend, you're going to be able to play though the Gendarran Fields zone.

In Guild Wars 2's next beta weekend, you're going to be able to play though the Gendarran Fields zone. We were given the chance to jump into that level 30 zone and scout it out ahead of time. We assembled the PC Gamer exploration team and set off in search of the zone's best events. Below, we've compiled videos of all of our favorites, plus a link to our archived livestreamof our adventures in the zone.

Burnin' down the house!

The first major event we came across in Gendarran Fields tasked us with fighting off a group of pirates and putting out the fires that they have quite rudely set to the better part of a small village. In between bouts, I picked up a water bucket (which disabled all of my weapon-based combat abilities) and dumped its contents on the flames. Taking this on solo will require a bit of juggling between hitting pirates in the face and dousing the ongoing inferno.

From here, Josh's Charr Necromancer and T.J.'s Norn Warrior split up and went down opposite sides of the zone. For Josh, this lead straight to a confrontation with more pirates.

To Pirate Island!

Josh: Having foiled their incendiary antics, I discovered that those rambunctious pirates had taken over an island in the middle of the lake. One of their own wanted me to assault it and knock her ex-friends down a peg. Apparently Pirates love nets because I was repeatedly trapped in them while trying to take down the buccaneers. And it quickly became even more apparent that assaulting a pirate captain on his boat head-on is not a wise idea. Still, I think the 10 cannon shots exploding on top of my corpse after I was dead was a bit overkill.

Of course I know the Pirate Polka! ...Just give me a minute.

Josh: One of the more interesting skill challenges I found in the zone (there were four), this scruffy pirate gal gave me the option of fighting her or doing the pirate polka. I, of course, opted for the latter, but after several command attempts erroring out (no /piratepolka?? Come on!) I resorted back to fisticuffs.

Well, that was not among my best ideas.

Josh: The dredge, a race of unagreeable subterranean mole-people, stick together. I was sent into the mountain to tear apart their mining operation (which I dutifully did), and then I stumbled into the sunlight and found a beautiful damsel in full armor asking for my aid. Of course, I'll help! In hindsight, the 5 unconscious champion NPCs should've told me that this boss was no cakewalk. It killed the soldiers faster than I could resurrect them and then came after me. Ouch. At least it resulted in some up-close footage of a Dredge in a mechwalker.

Meanwhile, T.J.'s hulking Norn found himself in the southwest corner of the zone, where a small town was under attack by the Risen dead.

Stick with me and you'll be just... okay, that guy's pretty strong.

T.J.: After fending off a wave of zombified creatures, I was tasked with escorting a caravan owned by a man and what seemed to be a rather fierce raccoon through the swampy sub-zone, so they could get supplies up to a town that was apparently under attack by centaurs or something. The waves of enemies in our way were of little consequence... until some kind of hulking super-zombie came at us and I had to fall back and regroup.

Door, meet hammer. Hammer, door.

T.J. Heading North, I discovered that besieged settlement that's been talked about in many a GW2 preview. After liberating it from centaur hooves, I was given a number of tasks to weaken the invaders, including rescuing some townsfolk they'd taken as slaves. I later discovered that it's possible to stop the slavers before they get back to the centaur camp, which would've obviated the need to bash down the cage door. Still, it was fun.

Between brazen buccaneers, marauding horse men and vicious walking corpses, you'd think you've seen the worst of Gendarran Fields. You would be wrong. We leave you with the true greatest injustice found here: a young boy named Applejack, who is a filthy, no-good liar with no honor. He taunts you with talk of delicious candied apples and then... well, see for yourself.