Ubisoft takes us through a very brief tour of some of the basics that you’ll need to survive the infected streets of Manhatten in The Division’s beta. This narrated trailer covers how to create your agent, what the various functions available to you in your base of operations, how to sell loot to venders and, of course, how to group up with other agents in the field.

The Division feels very much like an MMORPG but designed on a smaller scale. By grounding the game in a real world location Ubisoft have provided potential agents with a setting that feels not too far off from our own world, minus the whole lawlessness and viral contagions thing. It is clear that while the gameplay appears to be action packed there is al an emphasis on statistics – like health, damage per second, damage reduction – that can be found in other roleplaying games. Fusing MMORPG elements with First Person Shooters worked fantastically for Bungie’s Destiny, so let’s see if the same can be said for The Division.

The beta kicks off this morning on Xbox One and will open on Friday at 7 AM EST on Windows PC and PlayStation 4 and runs until an unspecified time Sunday January 31^st. Ubisoft’s last open beta, for Rainbow Six Siege, ended up getting extended after server issues caused problems. If the hype around The Division is any indication perhaps the same thing will happen here?

We have staff in the closed beta and we will be brining you as much content as possible over the coming days.

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