ArenaNet has been promising the Guesting feature since the launch of Guild Wars 2 last year and the wait for the feature is almost over. In a post to the Guild Wars 2 website today, ArenaNet Community Team Lead Martin Kerstein announced that the Guesting feature will arrive with the January 28th update.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the Guesting feature, it will allow you to play on a different world (server) of your choosing. It’s not a server transfer, so you’ll just be playing there temporarily, allowing you to group up with friends that may be on different servers or just see what the community is like elsewhere.

Guesting does come with a few restrictions.

Because (different from a world transfer) we are not moving your character between data centers, you may only guest on worlds in the same region as your home world. Players on North American home worlds cannot guest on European worlds or vice versa.

You may not participate in World vs. World on your guest world. If you choose to enter World vs. World on the world you are guesting on, you’ll be moved back to your home world. If you want to play World vs. World on the world you’re guesting on, you must perform a full world transfer to that world.

You’re eligible to guest on only 2 different worlds at a time. Each time you guest on a world, that world becomes one of your eligible guest worlds for the next 24 hours. After 24 hours, you may choose to guest on a different world. You may log in to any world you are eligible to guest on as many times as you wish with no restriction.

Guesting on worlds that are full or highly populated increases your risk of being put into an overflow map.

ArenaNet has also announced the end of free server transfers once the update goes live, so make sure that you’re rooted on the server world that you want to be on before the January 28th update. After that, you’ll have to pay a fee that is based on the destination server’s population to transfer and you’ll be limited to one move every seven days.

Source: Guild Wars 2 Guesting Announcement