We’re just a few short days from PAX East, and we’re looking forward to some excellent Guild Wars 2 coverage. PAX East was kind of an experiment to see how a big show like PAX would fare over on the convention starved east coast, and it has turned out to be as GlaDOS would say, a “huge success”. In fact, the show has moved to a different venue this year as last year’s location was clearly too small for such a huge turnout of people.
ArenaNet clearly favors fan-based conventions such as PAX, and while we got some tasty hints on what we could expect to see on the show floor during GDC last week, there should be an absolute blowout this weekend. While the press will be covering all the tasty Guild Wars 2 stuff coming out of the show, the game will be available for joe gamer to get his hands on it and there are sure to be torrents of gamer reports coming out as well, replete with all sorts of detail and minutiae to hopefully satisfy your voracious desire for new and exciting details on ArenaNet’s latest game, so even if you can’t make it out, your hunger for info should be sated this weekend, if just for a short while.
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So, what can we expect to see? For one, I did speculate in my last column that the Norn might end up being playable at PAX East, and sure enough that’s what you’ll be able to do, as ArenaNet recently confirmed that Norn will indeed be playable on the show floor. This, of course, has me pretty excited as I planned on playing the Norn at launch anyways. The dudes are huge and burly and the chicks embody that kind of Amazonian bad-ass female type that we see in characters like Robert E. Howard’s Red Sonja. I have a particular (and inexplicable) affinity for the latter as I also had a tatt’d up female Cimmerian Barbarian in Age of Conan. There is just something cool about playing a warrior chick that can beat ass with the rest of them (and looks the part).
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I get the idea that the Thief, the sixth class to be revealed for Guild Wars 2, was meant to be a PAX East surprise, but the cat was let out of the bag during GDC and we’ve learned a good deal about the new class already. That’s OK, I’ve not had a chance to play the Thief yet so I am still looking forward to it, and for those of you heading to PAX East I’m sure last week’s slip-up has only gotten you more excited to head out to Boston this week. The Thief is the re-imagined Assassin class from the original Guild Wars, and so if you’re the stealthy stabbity stab type guy like I am you might want to keep your ears perked this weekend for tons of new information. The reveal of the Thief leaves us with two classes unaccounted for, one of which is most likely the worst kept secret about the game, the Mesmer, and the eight should be an entirely new class none of us have a damn clue about just yet.
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Finally, I can’t mention PAX East without talking about our The Future of Online Games panel at the show. ArenaNet’s Colin Johanson will be on our panel, and it’s pretty clear at this point that Guild Wars 2 will have a significant role to play in the future of MMOs and online games so be sure to come by (Saturday 5-6PM EST at the Naga Theater) as our panel divines the future and takes some of your questions!
Will you be at PAX East? If so, what are you most excited to see/play? The Norn? The Thief? And don’t say Norn Thief! Also, if you get a chance to ask the developers one thing at PAX East, what would you ask?
