Today the Japanese branch of Capcom announced quite a lot of details about the upcoming beta of Monster Hunter World exclusive to PlayStation Plus.

First of all, the beta will start on December 9th at 9 AM PST, which translates to Noon EST, 5 PM GMT, 6 PM CET and 2 AM (on the 10th) Japan Time. it will end on December 12th at the same hour. We get three full days, even if Capcom did mention that the schedule is subject to possible change.

Of course, an active PlayStation Plus subscription is required.  The primary goal of the beta is to test server load and the worldwide matchmaking.

No offline play is included, and you'll have to be online all the time. That being said, you can enjoy quests alone, and you don't actually need to use the matchmaking.

You'll be prompted to choose a name, and then you'll use the character creation menu to choose your character's appearance and that of your palico buddy. Unfortunately, you won't actually be able to customize them for the beta, as there will be six premade male characters, six females, and six palicoes. Of course, the full character creation will be available when the game launches next year.

The beta also doesn't save the game, so once you finish a play session, you'll have to restart from scratch. Only quest completion status will be stored in the servers.

After you select your character, you'll be able to try out all the weapon types in the training area. There will be several targets that you can attack, and an item box that you can use to change weapons.

You can then select your quest, and select your equipment and that of your palico buddy. Equipment can also be changed in running while you're playing the quest. You can apply to a quest either as leader or party member.

Within the matchmaking menu, you can specify the language if you want to play only with people from a specific area. Japanese, English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish are supported. Communication will be available via voice chat, text, emoticons and gestures.

If you want to play with specific friends, you can give them the code specific to the quest you're hosting, and then wait as they join. During that time you can still change your equipment and that of your palico. For the beta only, there is no way to join a quest in progress, and you cannot kick other players. You'll be able to do both things in the final game.

There will be three quests available, two in the Ancient Forest hunting a Great Jagras and an Anjanath, and one in the Wildspire Waste hunting a Barroth.

After each quest, players will be evaluated on a number of factors in the results screen.

There will also be goodies to reward players for their participation. Clearing one of the quests will grant a camo facepaint (that you can see at the bottom of the gallery) that will be unlocked in the final game. Clearing all the quests will grant a set of useful consumable items.

The beta will weigh 5.1 gigabytes for Japan, and 5.9 gigabytes for the west (probably due to localization data). Pre-load will be available on December 8th.

You can check out all the screenshots below. If you want to see more you can also watch some new videos from this morning, more videos from the same series, some more gameplay from a few days ago, a gallery of recent screenshots directly from Capcom, another batch of videos and screenshots, even more gameplay, the trailer that revealed the Rotten Vale area (which unfortunately won't be in the beta), the reveal of the crossover bonus with Guerrilla Games’ Horizon Zero Dawn, and my own recording of a quest I played at Tokyo Game Show. On top of all of that, you should also read our recent hands-on preview.

Monster Hunter World will launch worldwide on January 26th, for PS4 and Xbox One, with a PC version coming at a later date.