An employee of Guild Wars 2 developer ArenaNet has released screenshots of an alpha version of the game. The screenshots were posted on Twitter earlier this week.

The new images were posted by Matthew Medina who is a game designer at ArenaNet. According to Medina the screenshots were made between May and June of 2009. The game ultimately released in August of 2012.

The screenshots show that the Guild Wars 2 engine is a heavily modified version of the original engine that was used in the first Guild Wars game. In the screenshots the original user interface of the original game can also be spotted.

The screenshots were made during the first phase of development and shows the first dynamic event in the game called Liberate Shaemoor Garrison being tested. At that point in time the game featured a different chat window, a different skill bar, a different radar and a different map.

Curiously the screenshots also show an FPS counter that drops to 8 frames per second. While the developers of the game have certainly improved performance of the game since then, even today the game can drop to frame rates of below 30 in situations where there are lots of players around, such as during a boss battle or in the World versus World game mode.