ArenaNet announces first hands-on demo of Guild Wars 2

Convention season is well underway, but we've not seen a lot of ArenaNet on the convention floors this year. That's about to change, as ArenaNet has announced its plans for upcoming conventions -- as well as some extremely exciting news.

Global Brand Director Chris Lye penned the latest blog post, and began by confirming that ArenaNet will not be at E3 this year. It's a great convention, but as he pointed out, it's "anti-fan," and ArenaNet is focusing on the fans at this point in time.

So where will they be? You'll find ArenaNet at the San Diego Comic-Con, gamescom in Germany, and of course PAX Prime in Seattle. In the middle of all this, Chris dropped some extremely exciting news: "This is the big one folks! I'm happy to announce that we will unveil the first public hands-on demo of Guild Wars 2 at gamescom in Cologne, Germany! If you want to be the first in your guild to play GW2 (and you're in Europe), this is the show to attend."

There will be hands-on demo stations at PAX in Seattle as well, so if you've been considering going to either of these, the first real look at Guild Wars 2 gameplay should be more than enough to tip the scales.