It seems that most cool things happen on the internet, when I am disconnected from it. Yesterday, three things rocked Guild Wars’ small corner of the internet, most of which happened while I was on the train home.
The first was the USK’s certification of a Guild Wars 2 (gamescom – Trailer). ArenaNet will have a good presence at the convention (Jeff Grubb would be my personal target to stalk), but they will not have a booth. The certification has since publicly been taken down. Although I would love to see any Guild Wars 2 trailer sooner, PAX would be a much better convention to present it because ArenaNet will have a booth and very strong presence there. I am excited about the possibility of a CG trailer because the Guild Wars Factions trailer is one of my all time favorite video game trailers.
Then Jeff Strain, one of ArenaNet’s co-founders, amicablyleft NCSoft as President of Product Development. The public is not really sure as to the reasons of the departure only about a month before the NA/EU launch of Aion Online. Strain is an MMO giant, and I hope one day to be able to chat with him. Hopefully someday, somehow he will be back in our little niche market. Regardless, Mike O’Brien, one of the other ArenaNet co-founders and current executive producer of Guild Wars 2, has the best thoughts, especially with regard to Guild Wars 2:
Jeff is a personal friend of mine. We worked together very closely from the time he joined Blizzard in 1996, through our founding of ArenaNet in 2000, until he left ArenaNet to join NCsoft West in 2008. I’m sad to see him leaving NCsoft now. We remain good friends and I wish him great success in his next endeavor.
It’s important to understand that ArenaNet is a separate and self-contained development studio. Jeff hasn’t been involved in the day-to-day development of Guild Wars 2since he left ArenaNet more than a year ago, and I don’t expect his departure to have a direct impact on our studio or on Guild Wars 2. I continue to lead ArenaNet, and I’m not going anywhere.
The final bit of news is the application process for the Guild Wars Test Krewe is now almost open. The application went up and down most of last night because there were backend issues that prevented actual submission of the application. It seems like it is currently down, but should be re-opened sometime in the west coast morning. The application asks for beta experience, age of your favorite Guild Wars character, and a very open-ended “what would you bring to the Test Krewe.” If you want to help Guild Wars Live Team development, with a possible jump to get into Guild Wars 2 testing, check it out. I highly recommend reading this wisdom before submitting an application.
I finally logged off last night, and XKCD, as usual, knew exactly how I felt.
–Ravious
sleep tight in your cot