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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]

Last month the E3 2011 web site allowed folks in the game industry to register to attend the annual PC-video game trade show in Los Angeles. Today the web site started to allow media to register for attending E3, to be held on June 7-9 at its usual home of the Los Angeles Convention Center. One interesting twist for media registration is that badges won't be mailed ahead of time. Instead a bar code will be emailed to approved media members that will be scanned at the convention center for the final badge.

The web site also has a preliminary list of exhibitors that are already signed up to attend the 2011 trade show. At first glance it looks like most of the major publishers and a lot of smaller companies will be attending this year. One notable exception is NCsoft who is once again missing from the list. The MMO game publisher has chosen not to attend E3 for the past three years.

Update: Gamasutra reports that the changes for the delivery of media badges for E3 were made in order to keep physical badges from being resold or even copied before the show.

It's almost hard to believe that the first Guild Wars game was released just over five years ago in 2005, but has had an impact that continues to resonate as fans eagerly look forward to Guild Wars 2. This fifteen minute video briefly recounts the history of ArenaNet and gives fans a more intimate look at the designers and a game company that takes a very artistic approach toward development.

Download HD ArenaNet Guild Wars Retrospective Video (919 MB)
Check out all Guild Wars 2 downloads

While the team at developer ArenaNet are not giving us much clues as to when Guild Wars 2 will be released, the upcoming MMO has just made its second tie-in prose novel available. Guild Wars: Edge of Destiny is technically supposed to be released on December 28 but Amazon.com shows the novel as being in stock.

Written by J. Robert King the novel takes place a few years before the story events of Guild Wars 2 and tells the tale how the team of fantasy adventurerers known as Destiny's Edge came together. The characters in the team will appear in Guild Wars 2. The ArenaNet web site has a sample chapter of the novel to check out right now. It also has an interview with King about his work.

[Via Massively]

There's a bunch of new PC games being released this week but there's also some new free content coming to two major MMO games today. One of them is for City of Heroes. The long running super hero MMO from developer Paragon Studios and publisher NCsoft has just launched "Issue 19: Alpha Strike" to its subscribers. It includes, among many other things, a way to unlock the "Alpha Slot" which will give high level characters access to new powers. You can check out the full patch notes at the game's web site.

The other free content update is actually the first of three planned for EVE Online. The space-based MMO from developer CCP Games has pushed the first part of the Incursion expansion to subscribers It adds a new salvage ship and lots of other new features and improvements. The second part of Incursion is due out in December and the final part in January.

Guild Wars is not your typical MMO game and today the development team at ArenaNet have launched a new content update that ends with, of all things, a wedding. Hearts of the North is the second content event for the game that's designed in part to give players a transition to the events for the long awaited sequel Guild Wars 2.

The new quests in the game tell the story of one of Guild Wars's main characters Keiran Thackeray who was thought to have sacrificed his life at the end of the first Guild Wars content event the War in Kryta. In fact he he is alive and the Hearts of the North quests have your character looking for Thackeray. In the end you end up playing as Thackeray himself as he fights his way back to his true love Gwen and ends with a wedding ceremony between the two.

Looking to add some snap to your character? Some pizazz? NCsoft wants you to know that they have a set of new capes for those that play City of Heroes. There are five capes in total, each of which corresponding to the five possible origins: nature, technology, science, mutant, and magic. This trailer shows off these new capes for those curious. Our favorite is the science cape. It just pops more than the rest.

Download HD City of Heroes 'Origins' Booster Pack Trailer
Check out all City of Heroes downloads

Players of developer ArenaNet's Guild Wars game have been racking up achievements in the games since the first title was released many years ago. Now ArenaNet has revealed that those achievements will figure into the game's MMO sequel Guild Wars 2. In fact you can go ahead and find out about what kinds of Guild Wars 2 rewards you can gain right now.

Today ArenaNet launched a Hall of Monuments Reward Calculator web page. All you have to do is put in your character's name from the original Guild Wars and the calulator will figure out the rewards that will await you when Guild Wars 2 is released. There's more info on this feature on a FAQ page and more info on the feature can be found on this news posts. You might be able to gain access to things like in-game pets, special weapons and armor pieces and more. You can even let other people see what kinds of rewards you get via social networking pages like Facebook.

City of Heroes has had many free weekends, include ones where players get derelict accounts reactivated. The latest one, which is going on right now, commemorates the successful launch of Going Rogue and gives players a chance to try out all the new power sets, zones, and costumes available. This includes all accounts, including ones that are currently active, so if you haven't bought the expansion yet, here's your teaser! There's nothing else to say. The free minion-bashing gameplay stops at 11:59 PM PST on Sunday, and started this morning, so you can get to your cape-covered flying and brawling as soon as you want to. After this weekend, City of Heroes will once again require a purchase and subscription as usual. So go get your hero on!