Flameseeker Chronicles: The view from the cheap seats is pretty darn great

I did not go to Gamescom. I was kind of not anticipating last week at all, because I envisioned it as a week of me looking at all the wonderful things I couldn't have, much like a starving orphan outside a bakery (or maybe a homeless orphan in some player's home instance). I figured it would be very un-fun.

In fact, the opposite was true. Sure, I couldn't play hands-on, but I enjoyed all the Guild Wars 2 news flooding out of Gamescom just the same. I imagine being there would have made it impossible to take in all of these details from every direction -- it just would have been too overwhelming.

Don't get me wrong, it's not sour grapes. I would have loved to be there! But since I couldn't, I'm really enjoying my bird's-eye view, so to speak. Even from this point of view, the amount of new information we have is nearly impossible to keep track of, so for Flameseeker Chronicles this week, I thought I'd take all that we've heard this week and try to distill it into a guide on where you can find information.

It's felt a bit like trying to take an octopus and 15 of his closest friends and convince them all to fit comfortably in one small sandwich baggie, but I've done my best. Follow along after the jump to see where you can find the latest and greatest from Guild Wars 2 at Gamescom.

I wanna see!

Maybe you didn't get to attend Gamescom either. Or maybe you did, but couldn't see much beyond a screaming crowd. Either way, ArenaNet has you covered. NCsoft West's YouTube channel has been updated regularly and currently includes seven very well-done official videos from the Guild Wars 2 booth. You'll find several Q&A sessions, the presentation of the Best Online Game of Gamescom 2010 award, and a fun video of Nima Djavid playing to the crowd and tossing out what in the end looked to be an insane amount of swag. (On a side note, I'd love to know how many t-shirts and other goodies got thrown to the crowd last week.) This is a good channel to subscribe to, as it's almost certain that more will be added very soon.

The people at ArenaNet took a load of still photos too, and they're in a sharing mood. The ArenaNet Flickr album from Gamescom contains over 100 photos at the moment, and hopefully we'll see more soon. A highlight of the album is from Sunday's costume contest, where some truly creative and talented fans got their moment onstage.

Finally, the ArenaNet team took a moment yesterday on the ArenaNet blog to share a few standout memories from the event. The blog post is accompanied by what is easily one of the coolest screenshots from Gamescom -- everyone in game heading over to Beetletun for a group salute and wave.

Necromancer reveal Wednesday

The necromancer class was big news at Gamescom. When we spoke to Jeff Grubb back in July, we asked about classes. Jeff said "We are currently in the process of revealing those on the website, and there should be one more revealed before we go live at GamesCom and PAX. Before Cologne, before PAX, we'll know a fourth."

As always, speculation and anticipation spiked, and the mention of both a mesmer and necro in Ghosts of Ascalon narrowed the possibilities down nicely. Sure enough, the day before Gamescom opened to the public, the ArenaNet team in Cologne casually mentioned the necromancer class as part of the demo.

It was an unusual reveal in that it didn't include the description, screenshots, and videos that we've had with the other class reveals. However, those at Gamescom got to see the necro and his skills firsthand, which is even better. Unfortunately, an overenthusiastic fan did some digging, found some of ArenaNet's unreleased skill video files, and shared them on a fansite, forcing ArenaNet's hand.

Community Manager Regina Buenaobra stepped into the (now deleted) video thread to clarify things a bit: "Well, now the surprise has been spoiled for when we do release the necro website content. I hope I do not see complaining that people have seen those videos before, and that they are 'old news'. Since you've already seen those skills, I'm letting you know now that we will release the necro profession on Wednesday. (We're all a bit disappointed that you found those skill videos. We wanted it to be in context, with the necro web page, and we wanted all the info to arrive at once in a nice, impactful package. Ah well.) "

As ArenaNet has been requesting that people remove the leaked videos from YouTube, I decided to avoid them completely until they come straight from the source. Keep your eye on Massively Wednesday when the necro class is officially revealed and I go over it with a fine-toothed comb!

I want it all!

You want to see everything? Every video, every image, every description? Unfortunately, that would take up about 10 times my allotted space here on Flameseeker Chronicles, but I can help you out.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'm going to have to say again what a fantastic community Guild Wars 2 has and give a cheer to JR and the rest of the crew at Guild Wars 2 Guru. Their News, Interviews, and Articles forum is easily the best I've seen on any fansite out there.

They have an extremely large and diverse community, and hundreds of people have been contributing all week. Photos, videos, links, impressions, transcriptions, and translations have poured in every day. It could have easily become an overwhelming and disorganized mess if it wasn't for the work of the mods and admins there. Instead, we ended up with This. Is. GAMESCOM. This thread is what I heartily recommend as your go-to source for everything Gamescom -- well, as far as Guild Wars 2 is concerned.

The GW2G crew and community have been working all week to keep the original post in the thread up to date and organized. Simply scroll through the first post to find what you're interested in, and don't forget to leave a big thank-you to all of the people who worked so hard on it.

Finally, don't forget to watch here at Massively for a little more from Gamescom. We may not have been able to go, but we had a fantastic production company representing us there, and I think you're going to like what they have to show us from the Guild Wars 2 booth!