ArenaNet posts

Guild Wars 2 trailers so far have tended to be on the side of area reveals rather than anything substantial. In this case, it's the home of the Charr, another one of the playable races. While they were primarily antagonists in the original Guild Wars, here they are much more benign. Lots of beautiful landscapes and menacing felids abound in this trailer, but once again there is nothing of any real in-game substance. Just some excellent art.

Download the Guild Wars 2 'Domain of the Charr' trailer
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Guild Wars 2 may be months, perhaps even years away, but the ArenaNet development team is still revealing more and more about it's long awaited MMO game. Today it's April Fool's web site update gives us another profession, the Commando.

Of course all of this is just a little bit of fun for April 1 but the truth is the Commando would be one of the game's most popular professions if it really was going to be put into Guild Wars 2. After all who wouldn't want to shoot a dragon or a fantasy creature with a sub-machine gun? We know we would. The game's official site has all sorts of info about the Commando including some actual gameplay movies.

Download the Guild Wars 2 Commando Skills trailer at Big Download

Guild Wars 2 and the game's developer ArenaNet is slowly revealing more info about the upcoming fantasy MMO sequel. The newest video shows off the Thief profession as used by several different races via in-game cinematic footage.

As you can see, the Thief can use its hyper-speed abilities to take out even the largest of enemies. It can also used both melee weapons like knives along with ranged weapons like arrows and guns (including using them in John Woo-style dual shooting mode). There's also some stealth involved in the Thief profession. We will likely learn more about Guild Wars 2 in the months ahead of its release.

Guild Wars 2 is heading to PAX East 2011 this weekend and for those of you who will be attending the now sold out show in Boston you will get a chance to see a new build of developer ArenaNet's upcoming fantasy MMO sequel. One of the new features that will be seen in the PAX East build will be how the game handles crafting.

In a new post on the ArenaNet blog site, game designer Andrew McLeod writes about the eight different crafting disciplines that can be learned in the game. Characters can learn up to two disciplines at once. The blog entry also talks about how characters can gather the raw materials for making items in the game and the crafting stations which will be found in the major population centers in the game world. It sounds like the crafting system will be simple enough to use but will still allow for a ton of variety in making weapons and other items.

PAX East 2011 is less than a week away but opportunity to attend at least one day of the March 11-13 gaming event in Boston are slipping away. According to a post today on the official PAX Twitter page, " ... we only have about 250 Sunday badges left!". Those tickets are expected to sell out before the start of PAX East on Friday.

Meanwhile game publishers and developers are starting to annouce their PAX East exhibit plans:

• Irrational Games will be holding an invite only party on March 12.
• ArenaNet will show off a playable version of Guild Wars 2 at PAX East.
• FireFall will be shown off for the first time in playable form at PAX East.
• Nvidia is rumored to launch its new dual GPU graphics card the GeForce GTX 590 at PAX East.

There is a new zone trailer for Guild Wars 2, and it covers the land of the Nordic-like Norn. Full of sweeping vistas, rugged wildlife, and treacherous terrain, it looks like a beautiful wilderness-styled zone. Of note to us are the snow-covered areas, such as the dwelling and the statues of bears, and the distinct architecture of the Norn. There's also an arena, just in case you forgot about combat while taking in all the beauty. once again, a relatively valueless trailer for story or game mechanics, but entertaining for the art style.

Download Guild Wars 2 'Norn Zone Preview' Trailer
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Much like Blizzard, the team at developer ArenaNet is known for taking its time when it comes to making its games. The MMO sequel Guild Wars 2 is certainly an example of that. The game was officially announced nearly four years ago and it still doesn't have an official release year, much less a release date. However this week the game's official FAQ has been updated with this statement, "We will be conducting small closed alpha and beta tests in 2011." The FAQ page goes on to say, "The feedback from these tests will determine when we will do public beta tests and ship the game.

While this is far from an actually release date window it sounds like ArenaNet and publisher NCSoft are at least getting closer to whatever milestone they want to reach for Guild Wars 2. In the meantime the game's official web site as well as ArenaNet's web site have been posting more details this week on how humans fit into the game's fictional world.


[Via Massively]

Guild Wars 2 is exciting for any number of reasons, with the foremost being how the game plays. However, ArenaNet has decided to relax a bit on the gameplay front and instead gives us this trailer. It explores the starting zone for the human race, and shows off the natural beauty and architecture therein. It's a testament to the power of Guild Wars 2's engine in rendering real-time environments, but that's about all there is to it. This trailer is pretty scenery and nothing more.

Download Guild Wars 2 'Human Zone' Preview Trailer
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As promised, more info on the Guardian profession for the upcoming fantasy MMO Guild Wars 2 has been revealed. Eurogamer reports that the Guardian is actually a (sort of) replacement for the Monk profession in the original Guild Wars. Developer ArenaNet designed the new character "from scratch" to not be a healer but more of a offensive character.

ArenaNet's Jon Peters states that the Guardian profession is designed to be " ... more in-the-front-line, fightery, throwing up walls, shields and doing these other crowd control area block things." This is the fifth profession in Guild Wars 2 to be revealed (the others were Necromancer, Ranger, Warrior and Elementalist). Three more professions have yet to be named and described by ArenaNet.

Update: The official Guild Wars 2 web site has more info on the Guardian profession.

So far this year developer ArenaNet has been pretty quiet about its progress on its long awaited MMO sequel Guild Wars 2. But that should change next week. A post on the PC Gamer web site showed off a screenshot (shown above) of the Guardian profession in the game, something which until now hasn't been discussed.

But never fear; ArenaNet will have you covered. As posted by the developer's community manager, "We will have a full reveal of the guardian, along with all the goodies (pics, videos), next Thursday." That's actually this coming Thurday, January 27 for those of you keeping score at home.

[Via Massively]